Forfeiture

Dictionary: 
Black's Law Dictionary: 2nd Edition

1. A punishment annexed by law to some Illegal act or negligence in the owner of lands, tenements, or hereditaments, whereby he loses uil his interest therein, and they go to the party injured as a recompense for the wrong which he alone, or the public together with himself, hath sustained. 2 Bl. Comin. 267. Wiseman v. Me-nulty, 25 Cal. 237.
2. The loss of land by a tenant to his lord, as the consequence of seme breach of fidelity. 1 Steph. Comm. 166.
3. The loss of lands and goods to the state, as the consequence of crime. 4 Bl. Comin. 381, 387 ; 4 Steph. Comm. 447, 452 ; 2 Kent, Comm. 385 ; 4 Kent, Comm. 426. Avery v. Everett, 110 N. Y. 317, 18 N. E. 148, 1 L. R. A. 264, 6 Am. St Rep. 368.
4. The loss of goods or chattels, as a punishment for some crime or misdemeanor in the party forfeiting, and as a compensation for the offense and injury committed against him to whom they are forfeited. 2 Bl. Comin. 42ffi It should be noted that "forfeiture" is not an identical or convertible term with "confiscation." The latter is the consequence of the former. Forfeiture is the result which the law attaches as an immediate and necessary consequence to the illegal acts of the individual; but confiscation implies the action of the state ; and property, although it may be forfeited, cannot be said to be confiscated until the government has formally claimed or taken possession of it.
5. The loss of office by abuser, non-usor, or refusui to exercise it
6. The loss of a corporate franchise or charter in consequence of some illegal act, or of malfeasance or non-feasance.
7. The loss of the right to life, as the consequence of the commission of seme crime to which the law has affixed a capital penalty.
8. The incurring a liability to pay a definite sum of money as the consequence of violating the provisions of some statute, or refusal to comply with some requirement of law. State v. Marion County Com'rs, 85 Ind. 493.
9. A thing or sum of money forfeited. Something imposed as a punishment for an offense or delinquency. The word in this sense is frequently associated with the word "penalty." Van Buren v. Digges, 11 How. 477, 13 L. Ed. 77 1.
10. In mining law, the loss of a mining claim held by location on the public domain (unpatented) in consequence of the failure of the holder to make the required annual expenditure upon it within the time allowed. McKay v. McDougall, 25 Mont. 258, 64 Pan. 669, 87 Am. St. Rep. 395; St. John v. Kidd, 26 Cal. 27L
—Forfeiture of a bond. A failure to perform the condition on which the obligor was to be excused from the penalty in the bond.
—Forfeiture of marriage. A penalty incurred by a ward in chivalry who married without thi consent or against the will of the guardian. See Duplex Valor Maritagii.
—Forfeiture of silk, supposed to lie in the docks; used, ia times when its importation was prohibited, to be proclaimed each term in the exchequer.
— Forfeitures abolition aet. Another name for the felony act of 1870, abolishing forfeitures for felony in England.

Author: 
Henry Campbell Black, M.A.
Publisher: 
West Publishing Company
Year Published: 
1910
Genre: 
Law Dictionary