Definition
User de action (Law French) is an archaic procedural term meaning the pursuing or bringing of an action — that is, the act of commencing or prosecuting a legal suit in a court of law. The term reflects the initiating conduct of a plaintiff in seeking a judicial remedy. It appears in old English and early American common law practice as a descriptor of the procedural step by which a party set the legal process in motion.
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Common Language
The word "user" in modern English typically denotes a person who uses something, while "action" carries both an ordinary sense of doing something and a legal sense of a lawsuit. Neither word in isolation signals the compound's legal meaning.
In Law French, "user" derives from the Old French verb meaning to use, employ, or exercise — so "user de action" reads literally as "the exercising or employment of an action." The phrase does not map onto either modern English word's ordinary meaning, and a researcher encountering it for the first time without knowledge of Law French would likely misread it entirely.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older practice manuals, early procedural treatises, and pre-nineteenth-century court records. Researchers working in colonial American, early republic, or English common law materials may encounter it in contexts describing whether a plaintiff had properly commenced or pursued a suit — questions that bore on jurisdiction, venue, and limitation of actions.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry adds a procedural dimension that Black's omits: the phrase carried significance in relation to bringing an action "in the proper county" — meaning venue requirements were bound up with the concept. This matters for researchers examining early procedural disputes over whether an action was properly laid, as a defective user de action could be grounds for abatement.
Researchers should note that Law French terms were largely displaced from Anglo-American legal writing by the late eighteenth century, and the term will rarely appear in sources after that period. Its presence in a document is itself a dating signal. Cross-referencing with Cowell's Interpreter (the source all four dictionaries ultimately trace to) is advisable when precision is required.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry includes a citation to 3 Pittsb. (Pa.) 504 in connection with "uses and purposes" under a lateral railroad act — this appears to be an editorial artifact of the original source's typesetting rather than a citation to authority for the core definition of user de action itself. Researchers should not treat that citation as governing the term's meaning.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries converge on the same core definition: the pursuing or bringing of an action. Black's (both editions) and Burrill trace this directly to Cowell and describe the term as belonging to "old practice," signaling that even by the time these dictionaries were compiled, the term was understood as archaic.
Rapalje & Lawrence offers the most textured entry, specifying that the concept involved bringing an action in the proper county — a venue-specific gloss that the other sources do not supply. This suggests the term had procedural bite beyond mere initiation of suit, encompassing the requirement that the action be brought in the correct forum.
No source provides substantive case law or treatise authority beyond Cowell, consistent with the term's obsolescence as a working legal phrase. Researchers should not expect to find judicial opinions expressly construing this term; its practical import was absorbed into broader doctrines of venue, commencement of suit, and abatement.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term is rooted in English common law practice and appears in early American legal materials that inherited that tradition. Its procedural significance — particularly the venue dimension identified by Rapalje & Lawrence — would have varied by colony and early state, as local court structures and venue rules were not uniform.
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