Real Action - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition real-action

Definition :

Real action, one brought for the specific recovery of lands, tenements, and hereditaments.

Among the civilians, real actions, otherwise called vindications, are those in which a man demanded something that was his own. They were founded on dominion, or jus in re.

The real actions of the Roman Law were not, like the real actions of the Common Law, confined to real estate, but they included personal as well as real property. But the same distinction as to classes of remedies and actions pervades the Common and Civil Law. Thus we have, in the Common Law, the distinct classes of real actions, personal actions, and mixed actions--the first, embracing those which concern real estate where the proceeding is purely in rem; the next, embracing all suits in personam for contracts and torts; and the last embracing those mixed suits where the person is liable by reason of and in connection with property, Story's Confl. Laws, 781.

By the (English) Real Property Limitation Act, 1833 (3 & 4 Wm. 4, c. 27), s. 37, all real and mixed actions, except writ of right of dower, or writ of dower unde nihil habet, quare impedit, and ejectment, were abolished. By the C. L. P. Act, 1860, s. 26, the procedure in the excepted actions of dower, etc., except ejectment, was assimilated to that of ordinary actions, and by the Rules of Court under the Jud. Acts, all remaining distinction between ejectment and other actions is abolished. See ACTION.