judgment in personam
- noun
- /ˈdʒʌdʒmənt ɪn pɜrˈsoʊnəm/
- Formal
:
sentencia en persona
- The court issued a judgment in personam against the defendant, requiring him to pay restitution to the victims.
Examples
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After reviewing the evidence, the judge delivered a judgment in personam that mandated the company to cease its discriminatory practices.
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She was relieved when the court's judgment in personam required her landlord to return the security deposit promptly.
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In the 1940 decision Hansberry v. Lee, the Supreme Court noted the "principle of general application in Anglo-American jurisprudence that one is not bound by a judgment in personam in a litigation in which he is not designated as a party."
Academic text (2017)
Synonyms
1
7.1
A court decision that makes a person or company pay money to someone else
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a specialized legal Latin phrase: 'personam' is not an English lexical item and carries a technical legal sense (contrast with in rem) that a B1 learner would not infer from the English words 'judgment' and 'in'. Because one constituent is non‑transparent/opaque and the overall meaning is legal and technical rather than compositional, the expression is not derivable from its parts for an average learner.
Etymology
The phrase judgment in personam comes from old legal language where in + personam literally meant 'against the person'. So, judgment in personam means a court order aimed at one specific person, making them personally pay or do something.