Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The offense of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones.
- n. An unlawful breach of duty on the part of a ship's master or crew resulting in injury to the ship's owner.
- n. Sale or purchase of positions in church or state.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The purchase or sale of ecclesiastical preferments or of offices of state. See barrator, 1, 3.
- n. In old Scots law, the taking of bribes by a judge.
- n. The fraud or offense committed by a barrator. See barrator, 4.
- n. A vexatious and persistent inciting of others to lawsuits and litigation; a stirring up and maintaining of controversies and litigation. This is a criminal offense at common law.
- n. Also barretry, especially in the last sense.
Wiktionary
- n. the act of persistently instigating lawsuits, often groundless ones
- n. the sale and/or purchase of political positions of power
- n. unlawful or fraudulent acts by the crew of a vessel, harming the vessel's owner.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The practice of exciting and encouraging lawsuits and quarrels.
- n. A fraudulent breach of duty or willful act of known illegality on the part of a master of a ship, in his character of master, or of the mariners, to the injury of the owner of the ship or cargo, and without his consent. It includes every breach of trust committed with dishonest purpose, as by running away with the ship, sinking or deserting her, etc., or by embezzling the cargo.
- n. The crime of a judge who is influenced by bribery in pronouncing judgment.
WordNet 3.0
- n. traffic in ecclesiastical offices or preferments
- n. (maritime law) a fraudulent breach of duty by the master of a ship that injures the owner of the ship or its cargo; includes every breach of trust such as stealing or sinking or deserting the ship or embezzling the cargo
- n. the crime of a judge whose judgment is influenced by bribery
- n. the offense of vexatiously persisting in inciting lawsuits and quarrels
Etymologies
- Middle English barratrie, the sale of church offices, from Old French baraterie, deception, malversation, from barater, to cheat; see barrator.
Examples
“In criminal and civil law, barratry is the act or practice of bringing repeated legal actions solely to harass.”
“In another oration of Demosthenes we discover glimpses of what by many has been deemed maritime insurance, or rather of the fraud at present called barratry, which is practised to defraud the insurer: but, as Park in his learned Treatise on Marine Insurance has satisfactorily proved, the ancients were certainly ignorant of maritime insurance; though there can be no doubt frauds similar to those practised at present were practised.”
“It is not the same as barratry, which is active encouragement of lawsuits.”
“Texas law prohibits anyone from soliciting clients for lawyers - a third-degree felony known as barratry, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.”
“(The judge passed over the complaint about "barratry" in silence.)”
“In his court response, he accused Righthaven of "barratry," defined as”
“Based on past experience, I believe that this earns him an indulgence from the Online Left on anything up to barratry (naval definition).”
“The police are on the way to charge you with attempted swinicide, assault and battery, kidnapping, grievous bodily harm and barratry.”
“I seem to recall that barratry is allowed in Canada, though I confess I cannot now find evidence of it via a cursory web search.”
Chesler Chronicles » On Trial for Telling the Truth: Free Speech vs Political Correctness
“Eric @77, how about this: a statue of limitations, honoring the heroic sacrifice of the many downtrodden legal professionals who were tragically disbarred for barratry, in the form of a gigantic bronze were-pit-bull defeating a craven Lady Justice.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘barratry’.
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Crimes and Offences
Don't commit any of these if you can
firearms trafficking, illegal shipment ..., sale of counterfe..., smuggling, sale of dangerous..., cybercrime, money laundering, trafficking in hu..., serious and organ..., infraction, corruption, organised crime and 107 more...
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Courtroom Speak
Legal glossary with special focus on courtroom vocabulary
writ of execution, writ of certiorari, witness, waiver, warrant, voir dire, victim witness as..., writ, victim compensati..., verdict, venue, victim advocate and 792 more...
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Dirty Deeds, Acts & Villainous Arcana
Villains, evildoers, and the wonderful words to describe them.
putsch, internecine, galère, stygian, infernal, opprobrium, anathema, bruit, scurrility, mulct, misanthropic, invective and 102 more...
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Rats
rats, rat, tree-rat, pilori-rat, prorate, pro rata, Ratso Rizzo, ratfink, rat pack, Rat Pack, Rats!, rat race and 157 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
chained_bear "The idea was so feasible, in fact, that had the court known of a friendship between Briggs and the Dei Gratia's captain the entire episode might have been ruled an insurance scheme, or barratry—fraud against the owners—at the very least. Morehouse and possibly even Winchester would have gone to jail.... He knew what it looked like. It smacks of insurance fraud even today but, upon examination, that too is unlikely."
—Brian Hicks, Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew (NY: Ballantine Books, 2004), 151 Sep 18, 2009