Ejectment

A species of mixed aetioa whicb lies to recoyer the possession of lands, with damages and costs for the wrongful withholding of them; being the principal method now in use for trying titles to land, and especially distinguished from other actions by the series of legal fieiioM on which it is founded. Ejectment is nothing more than the old personal action of efictum of farm, {efectione firmc Bf) which lay to recover a term for years, adapted to the purpose of trying titles to the freehold, and the fictions which distinguished it are merely the essential features of the old action, (yiz., a lecue, an entry, and an ouster,) retained in form, though lon^ dispensed with in fact. It is still nominally an action to recover a term for years, but as, in order to do this, the lessor's title must first be made out, a recovery always necessarily in* Yolves the establishment of the title, and thus eflfectually, although collaterally and incidentally, accomplishes the object of the suit.* The peculiarities of this action are fully explained in the elementary books to which it will suffice to refer.

3 £1, Com. 19©_205. 8i Sf<«pA. C7om.669— 676. Id. 490. 2 Crabb's Real Prop. 1079, § 2477, et seq. Wharton's Lex. Cra Ws Hist. 418, 448, 656.

The fictions of ejectment have been made the subject of much criticism, but they haye effectually survived the late sweeping changes in the remedial law of England, and are still retained in practice in several of the United States.

4 Kent's Com. 70, 71, note.

Ejectment has been described above as a mixed action. This is according to the arof Blackstone, and it is expressly nement enominated in England, by the stat 3 k 4 Will. IV. c.

27. 3 Bl. Com. 199. 8 Steph. Com. 460, note {q).

It is, howeyer, classed by Mr. Crabb with real actions, and this is the arrangement of the New- York Revised Statutes, 2 Crabh's Real Prop. 1079.

2 N. T. Rev. St. [302], 229.

On the other hand, Mr. Stephen prefers to consider it as a personal action, which it originally was.

8 Sieph. Com. 460, note {q).