Personal

Appertaining to the person; belonging to an individual; having the nature or partaking the Personal action. In one sense of this term, it signifies actions brought upon engagements of persons, or to recover damages for acts or neglects of duty by persons, or to recover chattel property. In this sense it embraces actions which arise either upon contracts, as account, assumpsit, covenant debt, and detinue; or for wrongs, injuries, or torts, as trespass, trespass on the case, replevin, trover. In a broader but less frequent use, it denotes actions against persons (actions in which living beings are defendants), as opposed to actions in rem, — suits prosecuted by seizure and condemnation of property, in which the living person interested appears indirectly as " claimant," for example. Personal actions are such actions as are brought for recovery of some debt, or for damages for some personal Injury; in contradistinction to the old real actions, which related to real or landed property, &c.

Broum

The term personal action signifies: 1. An action which can be brought only by the person himself who is injured, and not by his representatives.

2.

An action which is not for the recovery of land.

Mozley i- W

Personal assets. Those assets of a bankrupt, insolvent, or decedent estate, which are not real property; the chattels, money, and evidences of debt available for payment of debts.

Personal chattel

Any thing movable; things which are considered as annexed to or attendant on the person of the owner. Personal contract, or covenant. Those contracts or covenants which do not affect or involve real property, but relate to personal property, or require acts of persons, are distinguished as personal. Personal estate, or personal property. These terms, applied to corporations, mean such portions of their capital, paid in, or secured to be paid in, as are not invested in real estate.

Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. V. Mayor, &c. of N. Y., 7 Hill (N.Y.), 261.

The terms personal estate, property, chattels, &c., signify any movable things of whatever denomination, whether alive or dead; as furniture, money, horses, and other cattle, &c.; for all these things may be transmitted to the owner wherever he thinks proper to go, and may therefore be Personal expenses. An agreement to pay personal expenses on a joiu'ney entitles the traveller to charge not only actual outlay, but also such expenses as he avoided by means of facilities belonging to himself.

Moore v. Remington, 34 Barb. 427.

Personal goods

The term personal goods, in the crimes act of Congress of April 30, 1790 (1 Stat, at L. 116), does not include choses in action.

United States v. Davis, 5 Mas. 356.

It does include bank-notes, money, and coin.

United States v. Murray, 1 Cranch C. Ct. 141; United States v. Moulton, 6 Mas. 637, 540.

The words personal goods, on the margin of a receipt or bill of lading, may be regarded as at most but a description of the character of the goods, and not as exempting the owner from freight, or the vessel from responsibility; although the owner of the goods was a passenger by another vessel of the same line.

The Elvira Harbeck, 2 Blotch/. 336.

Personsil injury

The term great personal injury must be understood as equivalent to the terms great bodily harm, or danger of loss of life or limb, or enormous bodily harm, as defined by the rules of the common law, to constitute a justification or excuse for homicide.

Green v. State, 28 Miss. 687.

Personal liberty

The freedom of the individual; tho civil right to go and come as one pleases.

Personal luggage

This term, as tised in the passenger act of 1847, only includes wearing-apparel and bed and bedding of passengers required for their comfort and convenience on the passage. It does not extend to furniture, stoves, agricultural implements, and other articles brought with the passenger, but not necessary for his personal convenience.

United States v. The Anna, 2 Ain. Law Reg. 421.

Personal property

An assignment of " all goods, wares, and merchandise, and personal property of every description belonging to the late firm," &c., does not pass an interest under a contract. The words personal property, in such connection, should be confined to visible, tangible property.

Kendel v. Almy, 2 Sumn. 278.

Although the words personal property, in their general signification, may include a chose in action, yet they are not infrequently used in the more limited sense of chattels, movable and tangible.

Leonard v. Lawrence, 32 N. J. L. 355.

The words personal property are used as embracing goods, chattels, coin, bills, and evidences of debt, &c.; though, in their strict legal definition, they signify the right and interest of the owner in these articles.

Stief B. Hart, 1 N. Y. 20, 24, 31.

The term personal property, used in the Ohio crimes act, comprehends bank-notes therefore be the subjects of robbery.

Turner 0. State, 1 Ohio St. 422.

One characteristic of personal property (or personalty, as it is sometimes called) is that it is usually of a transitory or movable nature, and capable of being taken away by the owner wherever he pleases to go; whereas real property (or realty, as it is sometimes termed) is of a local and not transitory nature, and does not possess the attribute of mobility, or the capacity of being moved about with the person of the owner; and hence, from its substantial and permanent nature, it is termed real. Brown. Personal replevin. A name applied to an action taking the place and answering the purpose of the old writ de homine replegiando. That writ is sometimes called the writ of person al replevin. The action or writ of personal replevin lies to review an imprisonment, and enforce, under the forms of an action, the right to liberty of an individual. In most jurisdictions, habeas corpus is, under modern legislation, a more expeditious and a preferable remedy. Personal representative, means the executor or administrator, and does not include the widow.

Hagen v. Kean, 3 Dill. 124.

It means executors or administrators, and not heirs or devisees of land.

Anderson v. Austin, 34 Barb. 319.

It does not include an agent

Jones u.

Tainter, 15 Mirm. 512.

Personal security.

1.

The safety of the individual; the civil right of exemption from injuries to the body.

2.

Evidences of debt which bind the person of the debtor, not real property, are distinguished from such as are liens on land, by the name of personal securities. That power to invest in personal securities embraces power to purchase a bill of exchange; see Gee v. Alabama Life Ins. & Trust Co., 13 Ala. n. ».

581.

Personal statute

Statutes which particularly afiect or regulate the condition or rights and duties of persons, are sometimes called, particularly under the civil law, personal statutes. Personal tithes, are tithes paid of such profits as come by the labor of a man's person; as by buying and selling, fains of merchandise, and handicrafts, &c. ''omlins. Personal transaction, does not mean a private transaction.

Howell v. Taylor, 18 N. Y. Supreme Ct. 214.