Illegal Practices - Law Dictionary Search Results
Home Dictionary Name: illegal practices Page: 3Puffer
Puffer, one who attends a sale by auction, to bid on the part of the owner, for the purpose of raising the price and exciting the eagerness of the bidders.The (English) Sale of Land by Auction Act, 1867 (30 & 31 Vict. c. 48), regulates the employments of puffers at an auction for the sale of land, and enacts that all sales of land where a puffer has bid shall be illegal unless a right of bidding on behalf of the owner shall have been reserved; that the conditions of sale shall state whether the sale is to be without reserve, or subject to a reserved price, or whether a right to bid is reserved; that if it be stated that the sale is to be without reserve, a puffer is not to be employed; that if a right to bid be reserved, the seller or one puffer may bid; and that the practice of opening bidding, formerly sanctioned by courts of equity, shall be discontinued. As to sale of goods by auction, see similar provisions, s. 58 of the Sale of Goods Act, 1893, and see AUCTION....
Sedition
Sedition, an offence against the Crown and govern-ment, not capital, and not amounting to treason. It cannot be tried at Quarter Sessions. See the (English) Unlawful Assemblies Act, 1799 (39 Geo. 3, c. 79); the (English) Seditious Meetings Act, 1817 (57 Geo. 3, c. 19), jointly called the '(English) Corresponding Societies Acts,' and much resembl-ing one another. Registered friendly societies are exempted by s. 32 of the (English) Friendly Societies Acts, 1896 (59 & 60 Vict. c. 25), if transact-ing no business not relating to the objects of the societies; and the (English) Criminal Libel Act, 1819 (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4, c. 8). By the (English) Act of 1817, s. 23, which has no parallel in the Act of 1799, political meetings of more than fifty persons within one mile of Westminster Hall, except for parliamentary election purposes, are declared unlawful on any day on which Parliament is sitting. By s. 25 of the Act of 1817, and s. 2 of the Act of 1799, every society or club, the members of...
Torture
Torture, an account of this atrocious expedient may be found in the Encyclop'dia Britannica (tit. 'Torture'). Reference may also be made to Jardine's Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England previously to the Commonwealth (1837), and an article by Mr. Wyatt Paine in the Law Times of January 28th, 1905, at p. 294, where attention is directed to the preamble of the Act for Pirates, 27 Hen. 8, c. 4 (repealed by the (English) Statute Law Revision Act, 1863).The infliction of intense pain to body or mind to punish; to extract a confession or information, or to obtain sadistic pleasure, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 1498.Torture is strictly the infliction of gradually increasing pain for the purpose of extracting confession, or accusation, but it is also used in the secondary sense of those 'cruel and unusual punishments' which, by the Bill of Rights of 1688, 'ought not to be inflicted.' The peine forte et dure (see that title) is also a kind of torture in the prim...
Ultra vires
Ultra vires [Lat.] (beyond the powers), said of a corporation or company when exceeding its authority. If the powers are given or acquired at common law or by custom or by charter, the corporation is a person at common law and may do anything which an ordinary person can do [Wenlock (Baroness) v. River Dee Co., (1885) 10 AC 354; British South Africa Co. v. De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., (1910) 1 Ch 354], subject to the consequences if the act is prohibited by the Charter or Act of Parliament, or by law directly or indirectly, Jenkins v. Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, (1921) 1 Ch 392. On the other hand, a cor-poration or company which is created by or under statute cannot do anything at all unless authorized expressly or impliedly by the statute or instrument defining its powers. An act done ultra vires a corporation means that it is 'an act which the company in general meeting could not authorize, and an act which, if every individual corporator assented to it, would still...
Warrant of Attorney
Warrant of Attorney, a written authority addressed to one or more solicitors to appear for the party executing it, and receive a statement of claim for him in an action at the suit of a person therein mentioned, and thereupon to confess the same, or to suffer judgment to pass by default and to permit judgment to be entered up against him. The practice of giving warrants of attorney is seldon resorted to. A warrant of attorney may be executed as a security for the performance of any agreement between the parties; but it does not extinguish an original debt, or affect the right to sue upon it, unless judgment has been signed, for until this is done it is merely a collateral security. It is usual to make the warrant subject to be defeated on the performance of certain conditions, and when this is the case, they are set forth in an agreement hence called the defeasance.The Debtors Act, 1869, contains various provisions in regard to warrants of attorney, e.g., they must be executed in the p...
- << Prev.
- Next >>