SUE EXTINCT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

SUE EXTINCTAuthored

The Law Mind • 777 words

Definition

Sue extinct is a historical term from English feudal and property law describing the extinguishment of a lord's right to exact suit of court — the obligation of a tenant to attend and participate in the lord's manorial court. When a tenant's duty to appear and render suit was released, merged, or otherwise terminated, the suit was said to be "extinct." The term operates as a compound: "sue" in the sense of suit (the feudal service obligation of attending court), and "extinct" in its plain sense of having been put out or ended. A suit of court could become extinct by unity of possession (where lord and tenant became the same person), by express release from the lord, or by operation of law.

The concept belongs to the broader vocabulary of feudal tenure and manorial law, where suit of court was one of the customary services owed by a tenant to a superior lord. Its extinguishment had practical consequences for the composition and jurisdiction of the manorial court, since the court's legitimacy depended in part on the attendance and suit of the tenants bound to it.

Common Confusion

"Sue" in modern English means exclusively to bring a legal action. In the feudal context, "sue" and "suit" were interchangeable terms for the service obligation itself — the duty to follow and attend the lord's court. Researchers encountering "sue extinct" in historical property records or pleadings should resist reading it as having anything to do with litigation. It describes the termination of a status obligation, not the dismissal or abandonment of a lawsuit.

Why It Matters in Research

This term is almost exclusively a term of art in pre-modern English land law and will surface primarily in sources dealing with manorial tenure, copyhold, and the feudal incidents of landholding. Researchers working in early American colonial land records may encounter it where English tenure forms were transplanted, though such usage is uncommon after the eighteenth century.

The most significant navigational trap is the modern resonance of "sue," which will mislead researchers into procedural law databases and litigation indexes. The term belongs in the property law and tenure corpus, not in civil procedure materials.

Because suit of court as a feudal incident had largely withered in practical importance by the time American legal literature was being produced in volume, sue extinct appears infrequently in American legal dictionaries and treatises. Researchers consulting the Law Mind corpus should expect to find the term concentrated in English equity and property sources, commentary on the Statute of Marlbridge (1267) and related legislation governing distress for suit, and in treatises on copyhold and manorial rights. The connection to equitable waste (flagged in the Rapalje & Lawrence entry) is worth noting: both concepts arise in the context of a lord's or tenant's rights being limited or extinguished, and manorial sources will often discuss them in proximity.

The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia entry on Discharge — Release and Covenant Not to Sue is a structural analogue: both deal with the extinguishment of an obligation that one party holds against another, though the mechanisms and legal contexts differ substantially.

Historical Dictionary Support

Rapalje & Lawrence do not provide a standalone definition of sue extinct, and the entry retrieved under this term in the source material is actually directed at equitable waste — a related manorial law concept but a distinct one. This is itself instructive: the overlap in the source index suggests that historical legal dictionaries treated the vocabulary of manorial obligations as a cluster, with suit of court, waste, and copyhold rights grouped together rather than defined in strict isolation.

This gap in coverage is characteristic of the period. By the time the major Anglo-American legal dictionaries of the nineteenth century were compiled, manorial law was largely a historical curiosity, and terms like sue extinct received passing treatment or none at all. Researchers should not interpret the absence of a full definition in Rapalje & Lawrence as an indication that the term lacked technical meaning — it had precise feudal significance — but rather that nineteenth-century lexicographers were already treating it as archaic. Earlier English sources, particularly treatises on copyhold by Watkins, Scriven, and Coke's commentary on Littleton, are more reliable starting points for a full account.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia: Discharge — Release and Covenant Not to Sue (structural parallel on extinguishment of obligations; compare mechanism and policy)

SUE EXTINCTmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883

24. Equitable waste. --But there are certain kinds of waste which courts of equity would always prevent, even where the tenant for life was unimpeachable for waste, and which are hence known as "equitable waste;" cutting down ornamental timber, and pulling down buildings, are instances of equitable waste, of a manor which is subject to the tenants' rights (Wats. Comp. Eq. 1153 et seq.; 3 Steph. of common, and hence "waste" is sometimes Com. 405; Garth v. Cotton, 1 Ves. 524, 546; used improperly to denote any land subject to rights of common or similar rights, although Baker v. Sebright, 13 Ch. D. 179;) where, under cultivation. (Elt. Comm. 188; Cooke however, a tenant for life pulls down a Incl. 42; Fleta 265; 7 Co. 5.) (See COMMON; building and erects a new one in such a COMMONABLE; LAMMAS LANDS; MANOR; OPEN FIELDS; SHACK.) The soil of a manorial waste is vested in the lord of the manor, and he therefore is entitled to pasture his cattle on it. He is also entitled to the minerals under the waste, and may work them so that he do not unduly interfere with the commonable rights of the tenants. (Wms. Comm. 150 et seq.) As to the inclosure of waste lands, see APPROVE, 1; INCLOSURE. way as to effect an improvement, the court will not interfere, this being what is called "meliorating" or "ameliorating waste." Doherty v. Allman, 3 App. Cas. 709. 25. The remedy for waste is an action for damages or an injunction. WASTE, (defined). 62 How. (N. Y.) Pr. 212; 22. Waste by tenant-Voluntary, 16 Hun (N. Y.) 226, 229; 7 Johns. (N. Y.) 227, or permissive. In the law of torts, waste 236; 3 Wend. (N.Y.) 341; 29 Mo. 325; Co. is whatever does lasting damage to the freehold or inheritance of land, or anything which alters the nature of the propLitt. 53 a. (what is). 6 T. B. Mon. (Ky.) 342, 348; 7 Pick. (Mass.) 152; 2 N. H. 430; 6 Yerg. (Tenn.) 334; Cro. Car. 531; 1 Dyer 65a, 281b; Hob. 234; 1 Hog. 391. (what is not). 1 Dall. (U. S.) 210; 5 Mas. (U. S.) 13; 2 Dana (Ky.) 374; 2 South. (N.J.) 552; 3 Paige (N. Y.) 259, 261; 12 Serg. & R. (Pa.) 272; 3 Yeates (Pa.) 261; 1 Rand. (Va.) 258; 8 Com. Dig. 1052; 1 Dyer 361b; 1 Hog. 147, 238; 2 Moll. 515, 516, 536; 1 T. R. erty so as to render the evidence of ownership more difficult, or to destroy or weaken the proof of identity, or diminish the value of the estate, or increase the burden upon it. It is either voluntary or permissive-the former being an offense, 55, 56. of commission, such as pulling down a house, converting arable land into pasture, opening new mines or quarries, &c.; the latter is one of omission, such as allowing a house to fall for want of necessary repairs, allowing land to remain flooded with water, &c. Co. Litt. 52b; Litt. § 71; Woodf. Land. & T. 566; Smith & S. L. & T. 228;! Fawc. L. & T. 198; 3 Steph. Com. 405 et seq. § 3. Impeachability for waste.-A copyhold tenant may not commit waste with). 11 Wend. trespass). (is a tort). 3 Wend. (N. Y.) 106. (remedy for). Com. L. & T. 484. (ejectment will not lie for). Hard. 57. (mortgagee in possession is chargeable 4 Watts (Pa.) 460. (when order to stay will be granted). (N. Y.) 160. (rule to stay not granted in action of 6 Halst. (N. J.) 193. (writ of). 3 Bl. Com. 225-227. WASTE AND UNAPPROPRIATED, (what land is not). 2 Munf. (Va.) 257. WASTE OR INJURY, (in act for protection of tax-payers). 62 How. (N. Y.) Pr. 212. WASTE, VOLUNTARY, (distinguished from permissive waste). 4 Harr. & J. (Md.) 373.

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