Also known as: goods and effects · personal effects
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
2 senses
Tangible personal property or belongings belonging to an individual. The category includes household goods, furnishings, and other movable items distinct from real property or documents.
The results or impacts produced by an act, event, or legal rule. This sense encompasses both intended outcomes and secondary effects that determine jurisdiction, discharge of duties, or adequacy of remedies.
Each sense below has its own examples, sources, and questions.
Tangible personal property or belongings belonging to an individual. The category includes household goods, furnishings, and other movable items distinct from real property or documents.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
The results or impacts produced by an act, event, or legal rule. This sense encompasses both intended outcomes and secondary effects that determine jurisdiction, discharge of duties, or adequacy of remedies.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Federal agents enter Esther Eisenberg's apartment without a warrant and open several suitcases containing her clothing and personal documents. The agents seize the suitcases and their contents. Esther moves to suppress the evidence on the ground that the agents violated her Fourth Amendment protection in her effects.
After Edgar Evers dies, his surviving spouse Edith Eberhardt selects household furniture, an automobile, and several items of jewelry from the estate. The probate court awards her up to the statutory limit for these personal effects in addition to the homestead allowance.
Eugene Ellsworth, a licensee permitted to store equipment on land owned by Emerald Enterprises, receives notice that the license is terminated. The company must allow Eugene a reasonable period to remove himself and his equipment from the premises.
The Fourth Amendment expressly protects effects in addition to persons, houses, and papers. Courts therefore treat personal property such as luggage and documents as covered by the warrant requirement.
Supporting sources
Surviving spouses may claim up to a statutory value in household furniture, automobiles, furnishings, appliances, and personal effects, with any shortfall made up from other estate assets.
Supporting sources
Elena Estrada, a California resident, publishes a defamatory article on a national website that she knows will be read by readers in New York. The article causes Elena's New York-based employer to terminate her contract. The New York court finds that the article's effects in the forum support personal jurisdiction over Elena even though she never traveled there.
Echo Systems contracts with Everlasting Insurance to insure a specific warehouse that later burns down. Because the continued existence of the warehouse was a basic assumption of the contract, the destruction effects a discharge of Echo Systems' duty to pay premiums for coverage of that building.
Echelon Security repeatedly trespasses on Emily Ellis's land by installing surveillance equipment. The court weighs the nature of the interests harmed and the effects of damage rules, including the cost of repeated suits, to decide whether an injunction is a more adequate remedy than damages.
The effects test permits jurisdiction when a defendant intentionally aims tortious conduct at the forum and knows the harm will be felt there, even without extensive physical contacts by the defendant.
Supporting sources
…a fundamental right. Though it was eventually repudiated, men and women suffered pain and humiliation in the interim, and the effects of these injuries no doubt lingered long after Bowers was overruled. A ruling against same-sex couples would have the same effect and would be unjustified under the Fourteenth Amendment.…