Definition
The quality of performing a required act in a tardy, negligent, or careless manner. Remissness is distinguished from complete non-performance: it applies to acts that are done, but done inadequately — too slowly, too sloppily, or without due care. It does not describe the total omission or forbearance of an act.
In legal contexts, the term has appeared most frequently in connection with the transmission of messages and communications, where a party's obligation was technically fulfilled but performed in a manner that fell short of the required standard of care.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The characteristic of being remiss.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Quality or state of being remiss.
The common usage of remissness — connoting general laxness or inattention — is broader than its legal meaning. Legally, remissness is not synonymous with total neglect or omission. A researcher who reads remissness in a legal source and interprets it as wholesale failure to act will misread the term. The legal usage is narrower: the act occurred, but defectively.
Common Confusion
Remissness is easily conflated with negligence and with omission, but all three carry different weight in legal sources.
Negligence encompasses both the careless performance of an act and the failure to act when a duty to act exists. Remissness, by contrast, applies only to the former — defective performance, not non-performance.
Omission is the complete failure to perform a required act. The historical dictionaries are explicit that remissness does not reach omission or forbearance. A party who sends a telegram late or carelessly may be guilty of remissness; a party who never sends it at all has committed an omission.
Why It Matters in Research
Remissness is a narrow, historically bounded term that appears infrequently in modern legal writing. Researchers encountering it in 19th-century sources — particularly in cases involving telegraph companies, common carriers, or fiduciaries — should treat it as a term of art signaling defective performance rather than failure to perform. Conflating it with negligence or omission in historical reading will produce analytical errors.
The single case anchoring the definition in both editions of Black's (Baldwin v. United States Tel. Co.) arose in the context of telegraph message transmission, which explains Anderson's narrower paraphrase focused on messaging. Researchers should not assume the term is confined to that context; the broader principle — tardy or careless performance of a duty — is transportable to any setting where a party performs but performs inadequately.
Because remissness occupies a position between full performance and complete omission, it surfaces in arguments about whether a party breached a duty at all, and if so, to what degree. In older pleading practice, the distinction mattered: characterizing conduct as remissness rather than omission could affect the form of action available, the nature of the defense, and the measure of damages.
Modern legal writing has largely absorbed remissness into the general vocabulary of negligence. Researchers working in contemporary sources will rarely encounter the term standing alone; when they do, it typically signals either archaic drafting or a deliberate effort to distinguish partial performance from non-performance.
Historical Dictionary Support
The two editions of Black's are in close agreement, reproducing substantially the same definition and pointing to the same New York authority. The second edition adds the full citation form (Baldwin v. United States Tel. Co., 6 Abb. Prac. N.S. (N.Y.) 423), which the first edition renders in abbreviated form. Anderson's definition is narrower in scope, limiting the term to the messaging context of the underlying case rather than stating the general principle. This is a point of divergence worth noting: Anderson's formulation could mislead a researcher into thinking remissness is a term of art specific to telecommunications or carrier law, when the Black's formulations make clear it is a general characterization of defective performance.
None of the three historical sources address the term's relationship to negligence doctrine with any depth, nor do they situate it within a broader taxonomy of fault. Researchers should not expect historical dictionaries to resolve questions about where remissness fits within a modern negligence analysis — that work requires consulting treatises and case law directly.