Definition
VIT does not appear to be a recognized legal term, legal abbreviation, or term of art in the Anglo-American legal tradition. The source material attributed to this entry in Rapalje & Lawrence is plainly erroneous — the text supplied describes asportation, not any term beginning with "VIT." This is consistent with a transcription or indexing error in the underlying source corpus, where an entry was misattributed or a page break produced a misaligned record.
No substantive legal definition for VIT can be responsibly generated from the available source material.
Common Confusion
VIT as an abbreviation should not be confused with legal Latin terms sharing the "vit-" root. Vitium in civil law tradition denotes a defect, flaw, or legal infirmity — particularly in contracts or property titles — and appears in phrases such as vitium reale (a defect in the thing itself, running with property) and vitium in contrahendo (defect in the formation of a contract). These are distinct terms with established meanings and should be sought under their full headings.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "VIT" in a Law Mind corpus search should treat it as a red flag for source corruption rather than a genuine legal term. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry purportedly defining this term is in fact the opening text of the ASPORTATION entry, including the Latin derivation (ab + portare) and the elements of wrongful carrying away of goods. This type of misalignment occurs in digitized legal dictionaries when optical character recognition errors, damaged page edges, or index mismatches cause an entry header to become detached from its content — or a new header to be inserted mid-entry.
Practical guidance: If you are researching a document that uses "VIT" as an abbreviation, the most productive path is to examine the jurisdictional and temporal context of the source. Legal Latin uses "vit-" as a root in several genuine terms (see RELATED TERMS below). Common historical abbreviations using "vit" may reference vitium (defect or vice, especially in civil law contexts) or appear as part of longer Latin phrases.
Do not treat the Rapalje & Lawrence text block associated with this entry as a definition of VIT. Consult the ASPORTATION entry directly for that content.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence supplies no usable content for this term. The text assigned to VIT in the source data is the definition of ASPORTATION, a well-documented legal concept covering the wrongful carrying away of goods as an element of both civil trespass (trespass de bonis asportatis) and common law larceny. That content is correctly addressed under its own heading.
No other historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — including Black's, Bouvier's, or Burrill — carry a primary entry for VIT as a standalone legal term.