Legal Terms and Concepts (F)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 1. fiduciary
a person who is obliged to discharge faithfully a responsibility of trust toward another. Among the common fiduciary relationships are guardian to ward, parent to child, lawyer to client, corporate director to corporation, trustee to trust, and business partner to business partner. In discharging a trust, the fiduciary must be absolutely open and fair. Certain business methods that would be acceptable between independent parties dealing with one another “at arm's length” may expose a fiduciary to liability for having abused a position of trust. Thus, in an ordinary business transaction the prospective purchaser of land need not inform the seller of an imminent rise in realty values, but one buying land from a partner must disclose such information. In many cases courts will treat an unexplained profit derived from a fiduciary relationship as an instance of constructive fraud.

2. finder
Ordinarily the finder of lost property is entitled to retain it against anyone except the owner. It is larceny, however, for the finder to keep the property if he knows or can easily determine who owns it. In some places the finder must deliver the lost object to the police; if it is unclaimed within a prescribed period it becomes his property. Lost objects that are embedded in the soil, e.g., a deeply buried ring, belong to the landowner even if another finds them. On the other hand, objects found in a privately owned place to which the public has the right of access, e.g., a hotel, belong to the finder and not to the owner of the realty. The purchaser of an article that, without his knowledge, has something of value concealed in it, e.g., money in a desk, is legally the finder, not the owner, of the valuable.

3. fine
1. In criminal law, sum of money exacted by a lawful tribunal as punishment for a crime. In the case of misdemeanors and minor infractions of the law, convicted persons ordinarily have the alternative of paying a fine or undergoing a short term of imprisonment. This practice has been condemned at times as potentially exposing the poor to more onerous punishment than the well-to-do. Fines are also sometimes imposed in convictions for felony, usually in addition to a prison sentence. The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States prohibits the imposition of excessive fines, but the Supreme Court has never found that any statutory fine violated that provision. 2. In the law of the transfer of land, a legal fiction for permitting the sale of lands in entail. The fine, first worked out in the 15th cent., is in the form of a suit to determine the ownership of land. The buyer sues the seller, who accedes to the buyer's claim that his right of ownership is superior. The judgment of the court to this effect constitutes the buyer's title. The fine was formerly widely used in England and the United States, but simplified methods of defeating the entail have made it obsolete. 3. In feudal law, payment to the lord for rights relating to tenancy