Definition
Prisel en auter lieu (Law French: "a taking in another place") is a plea in abatement available in a replevin action. When a defendant raises this plea, they assert that the goods or chattels claimed by the plaintiff were not taken in the place alleged in the writ, but rather in a different location. Because replevin writs were historically tied to a specific jurisdiction or venue determined by where the taking occurred, a successful plea of prisel en auter lieu defeated the writ on procedural grounds without reaching the merits of whether the taking was lawful.
The plea does not deny that a taking occurred, nor does it deny that the plaintiff has a right to the property. It attacks only the accuracy of the writ's description of where the taking happened. A successful plea required the plaintiff to obtain a new writ correctly identifying the place of taking.
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Common Confusion
Prisel en auter lieu is sometimes loosely grouped with pleas that challenge the right to replevy altogether, but it is a distinct procedural objection. It belongs to the family of pleas in abatement — those that defeat a particular writ or proceeding on technical grounds — not pleas in bar, which defeat the underlying claim permanently. A plea in bar to a replevin action might assert that the defendant had a lawful right to distrain or take the goods; prisel en auter lieu makes no such argument. Researchers should also distinguish this plea from the related replevin defense of non cepit (the defendant did not take the goods at all), which contests the fact of taking rather than the place alleged.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost entirely confined to historical common law sources and will appear in English and early American case reporters and treatises dealing with the action of replevin, particularly from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Researchers should be aware of several navigational points:
**Writ-based procedural world.** Prisel en auter lieu makes sense only within the technical writ system of common law pleading. Once code pleading replaced the writ system in most American jurisdictions following the mid-nineteenth century reforms (beginning with the New York Field Code of 1848), this plea effectively disappeared from American practice. Finding the term in a source postdating code pleading reform is a signal that the source is either historical, from a jurisdiction slow to reform, or using archaic terminology.
**English law reports are the primary home.** Black's and Burrill's both cite 2 Ld. Raym. 1016–1017 (Lord Raymond's Reports), an English reporter from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Researchers tracing the doctrinal content of this plea should go directly to that source. American cases adopting the plea will be sparse and early.
**Replevin corpus connections.** This term is a doorway into the broader Law Mind materials on replevin, distress, avowry, and cognizance. A researcher encountering prisel en auter lieu in a historical source is likely working through a replevin dispute involving distrained goods, and the surrounding pleadings will likely include avowry (the defendant's justification for the taking) or cognizance (a third party claiming the right to distrain). Understanding those related pleas is essential to reading early replevin records accurately.
**Law French orthography.** Spelling varies across historical sources. Researchers may encounter "prisel," "prise," or "prisa" as root forms, and "auter" sometimes appears as "autre." Burrill's and Black's use identical language, suggesting they share a common source; Bouvier's gives a slightly abbreviated version. No source diverges on substance.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree precisely on the core definition: a taking in another place; a plea in abatement in replevin. The uniformity is notable and reflects a narrow, technically settled term with little room for interpretive variation. Black's and Burrill's are most complete, both citing 2 Ld. Raym. 1016–1017 as authority. Bouvier's omits the citation but is substantively identical. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry as provided appears to contain a transcription or printing error that interrupts the definition mid-word ("A tak-"), though the recoverable content aligns with the other sources.
None of the historical dictionaries explain the procedural mechanics in depth — specifically, what happened after the plea succeeded, or how the plea interacted with venue rules. Researchers needing that layer of detail should consult Giles Jacob's Law Dictionary or Joseph Chitty's treatise on pleading, both of which address the technical operation of replevin pleas more extensively than any of the four dictionary sources.
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Jurisdictional Note
This plea belongs to the English common law tradition and was carried into early American practice in jurisdictions that retained common law forms of action. Its practical relevance is historical; modern replevin statutes in American jurisdictions have replaced the technical writ system and its associated pleas in abatement with streamlined procedural rules.
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