Definition
A Latin maxim meaning "the impediment being removed, the action rises." When a legal bar or obstacle to bringing an action is eliminated, the underlying cause of action becomes immediately available to the plaintiff. The maxim expresses a principle of procedural and substantive law: a right of action that was temporarily suppressed by some impediment does not perish with that impediment — it revives. The full form is *remoto impedimento, emergit actio*.
Common Confusion
REMOTO IMPEDIMENTO is sometimes read as an evidentiary principle because it appears in Black's 2nd Ed. near the discussion of remoteness of evidence. The two concepts are unrelated. Remoteness of evidence concerns the probative connection between a fact and the proposition to be proved. *Remoto impedimento* concerns the procedural or substantive revival of a cause of action when a legal bar is lifted. The alphabetical adjacency in Black's has caused researchers to conflate the two; they should be treated as entirely separate doctrinal matters.
Why It Matters in Research
This maxim appears most often in historical case law and treatises dealing with tolling doctrines, the removal of legal disabilities, and the lifting of procedural bars. Researchers working in pre-20th century materials will encounter it in discussions of when a statute of limitations begins to run after a disability is removed, when a condition precedent is satisfied, or when a party previously under legal incapacity (infancy, coverture, mental incompetence) regains the capacity to sue.
The practical significance is navigational: when you see *remoto impedimento* cited in a historical opinion, the court is typically reasoning about the moment an action becomes ripe — not about whether a right exists, but about when it can be exercised. This makes the maxim closely relevant to research on tolling provisions, revival statutes, and the accrual rules for statutes of limitations.
One trap for modern researchers: the maxim was frequently invoked in coverture cases, where a married woman's cause of action was said to be "suspended" during marriage and to revive upon the husband's death or divorce. Post-coverture reform statutes displaced this reasoning, and courts that once relied on the maxim in that context abandoned it without always saying so explicitly. A line of cases invoking *remoto impedimento* in coverture contexts is largely obsolete, but the underlying logic — removal of disability triggers accrual — persists in modern limitations doctrine under statutory rather than maxim-based framing.
Researchers will also find the maxim cited in equity cases dealing with injunctions and stays: once an injunction restraining an action is dissolved, *remoto impedimento* supplies the rationale that the restrained party may proceed immediately, with no additional act required to re-activate the right.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) gives the maxim its full Latin form and renders it as: "The impediment being removed, the action rises. When a bar to an action is removed, the action rises up into it." This is a compact but accurate statement. Black's offers no extended discussion, which is consistent with the treatment of maxims in that edition — they are given as brief glosses, relying on the reader to supply doctrinal context from treatises and cases.
The maxim itself is found in the broader tradition of common law maxims collected and glossed by writers such as Bacon, Noy, and Wing. It belongs to the family of conditional-logic maxims — like *cessante ratione legis, cessat et ipsa lex* — that describe the legal consequence of a change in circumstances rather than defining a substantive rule. Black's placement of the maxim in proximity to discussion of remoteness of evidence (as reflected in the source fragment) appears to be alphabetical coincidence of the "remot-" root rather than substantive connection; the maxim has nothing to do with evidentiary remoteness.
No other Law Mind shelf dictionaries provide entries for this maxim, leaving Black's 2nd Ed. as the primary dictionary authority here. Treatise support is the more productive avenue for researchers, particularly Wharton on Evidence and period civil procedure works.
Jurisdictional Note
The maxim was applied across common law jurisdictions in the 19th century but has been substantially absorbed into statutory tolling and accrual doctrine in the 20th and 21st centuries. It retains active use as an organizing principle in jurisdictions where courts continue to reason from common law maxims, but most American jurisdictions will have displaced it with specific statutory language on tolling of limitations periods.