Blacks Law Dict. 1st ed

PIGNORATITIA ACTIO

897

PETTY BAG OFFICE

PHYSICIAN. A practitioner of medi cine; a person duly authorized or licensed to treat diseases; one lawfully engaged in the practice of medicine, without reference to any particular school. 62 Wis. 289, 22 2ST. "W. Rep. 430. PIA FRAUS. Lat. A pious fraud; a subterfuge or evasion considered morally justifiable on account of the ends sought to be promoted. Particularly applied to an evasion or disregard of the laws in the interests of religion or religious institutions, such as cir cumventing the statutes of mortmain. PIACLE. An obsolete term for an enor mous crime. PICAROON. A robber; a plunderer. PICK-LOCK. An instrument by which locks are opened without a key. PICK OF LAND. A narrow slip of land running into a corner. PICKAGE. Money paid at fairs for break ing ground for booths. PICKERY. In Scotch law. Petty theft; stealing of trifles, punishable arbitrarily. Bell. PICKETING, by members of a trade union on strike, consists in posting members at all the approaches to the works struck against, for the purpose of observing and re porting the workmen going to or coming from the works, and of using such influence as may be in their power to prevent the work men from accepting work there. Dav. Friend. Soc. 212. PICKLE, PYCLE, or PIGHTEL. A small parcel of land inclosed with a hedge, which, in some countries, is called a "pingle." Enc. Lond. PICKPOCKET. A thief who secretly . steals money or other property from the per son of another. PIEDPOUDRE. See COUBT OF PIED POUDRE. PIERAGE. The duty for maintaining piers and harbors. PIGNORATIO. In the civil law. The contract of pledge; and also the obligation of such contract. PIGNORATITIA ACTIO. In the civil law. An action of pledge, or founded on a pledge, which was either directa, for the debtor, after payment of the debt, ox oon

PETTY BAG OFFICE. In English law. An office in the court of chancery, for suits against attorneys and officers of the court, and for process and proceedings by extent on statutes, recognizances, ad quod damnum, and the like. Termes de la Ley. PETTY CONSTABLE. In English law. The ordinary kind of constable in towns and parishes, as distinguished from the high constable of the hundred. PETTY SESSIONS. In English law. A special or petty session is sometimes kept in corporations and counties at large by a few justices, for dispatching smaller busi ness in the neighborhood between the times of the general sessions; as for licensing ale houses, passing the accounts of the parish officers, etc. Brown. PEW. An inclosed seat in a church. PHAROS. A watch-tower, light-house, x sea-mark. PHOTOGRAPHER. Any person who makes for sale photographs, ambrotypes, daguerrotypes, or pictures, by the action of light. Act Cong. July 13, 1866, § 9; 14 St. at Large, 120. PHYLASIST. A jailer. PHYSICAL DISABILITY. A disabil ity or incapacity caused by physical defect or infirmity, or bodily imperfection, or mental weakness or alienation; as distinguished from civil disability, which relates to the civil status or condition of the peison, and is imposed by the law. PHYSICAL FACT. In the law ofev idence A fact having a physical existence, as distinguished from a meie conception of the mind; one which is visible, audible, or palpable; such as the sound of a pistol shot, a man running, impressions of human feet on the ground. Burrill, Circ. Ev. 130. A fact considered to have its seat in some in animate being, or, if in an animate being, by virtue, not of the qualities by which it is constituted animate, but of those which it has in common with the class of inanimate beings. 1 Benth. Jud. Ev. 45. PHYSICAL NECESSITY. A condition In which a person is absolutely compelled to act in a particular way by overwhelming su perior force; as distinguished from moral necessity, which arises where there is a duty incumbent upon a rational being to perform, which he ought at the time to perform. 3 Sum. 248. A M. DICT. LAW—57

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