Also known as:fictio · fictiones · fictions · legal fiction · fictio legis · fictio juris
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
An assumption of a fact that is not true, made for the purpose of achieving a legal result. Courts employ the device to treat an entity or situation as possessing a status or attribute that reality does not support, then decide whether to maintain or disregard the assumption based on the equities presented.
Sources & Authorities
How it applies
Common Examples
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Commingled Funds and Asset Transfer
Lena operated Harborview Inc. without stock certificates, minutes, or a separate bank account, routing hotel revenues straight into personal accounts to pay mortgages and car loans. After a guest was injured on collapsing balcony, Lena moved all remaining assets into a new LLC, leaving the corporation judgment-proof. The court disregarded the fiction of separate corporate existence because the unity of interest and the resulting injustice justified holding Lena personally liable.
Emergency Medical Intervention
A delirious patient threatened to jump from a hospital window. A physician locked the room and later performed an emergency amputation while the patient remained unconscious. The court treated the intervention as resting on an implied-consent fiction even though no actual consent occurred, shielding the physician from liability for the unconsented touching.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Cases
Restatements
Dictionaries
Stock Situs as Jurisdictional Basis
Delaware plaintiffs attempted to sequester shares of a nonresident defendant to obtain jurisdiction over a corporate dispute. The court rejected the fiction that the shares were located in Delaware simply because the corporation was incorporated there, holding that the assumption could not support in-rem jurisdiction over absent owners.
Shaffer v. Heitner433 U.S. 186 (1977)
Surrogate Decision for Incompetent Patient
After an accident left a patient in a persistent vegetative state, family members sought to discontinue life support. The court acknowledged that any claim the patient's right to refuse treatment survived incompetence rested on a legal fiction, yet still permitted the surrogate to act when the decision reflected the patient's known interests.
Cruzan by Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept, of Health497 U.S. 261, 277 (1990)
Notice by Publication to Known Beneficiaries
A bank trustee published notice of an accounting proceeding in a newspaper to reach known beneficiaries whose addresses were on file. The court refused to indulge the fiction that publication actually informed those individuals, holding that the method failed due-process requirements when better notice was feasible.
Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank and Trust Co.339 U.S. 306, 313-314 (1950)
Public-Figure Status and Private Life
A magazine article criticized a private attorney who had once represented a controversial client. The court declined to treat every person who steps into public view as a full public figure under the fiction that such individuals voluntarily expose their entire lives, limiting the actual-malice rule to matters of genuine public concern.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.418 U.S. 323, 94 S. Ct. 2997, 41 L. Ed. 2d 789 (1974)
Common questions
Frequently Asked
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When will a court disregard the fiction of separate corporate existence?+
A court disregards the fiction when two elements are shown: unity of interest and ownership so that the corporation and its owner have no separate personalities, plus circumstances where maintaining the fiction would sanction fraud or promote injustice. Factors establishing unity include commingling of funds, failure to observe formalities, undercapitalization, and treating corporate assets as personal property.
Supporting sources
How does the implied-consent fiction operate in tort cases involving emergencies?+
The law treats an unconscious or delirious person as having consented to necessary medical treatment or protective restraint even though no actual consent exists. This fiction supplies a privilege that prevents liability for an otherwise unconsented invasion of bodily integrity when the actor acts reasonably to prevent serious harm.
Supporting sources
Why did the Supreme Court reject the res-location fiction in Shaffer v. Heitner?+
The Court held that the assumption that a court gains jurisdiction over a nonresident simply because shares in a Delaware corporation are deemed located in Delaware cannot support in-rem jurisdiction. The fiction was rejected because it bore no reasonable relationship to the defendant's contacts with the forum and therefore violated due process.
Supporting sources
433 U.S. 186 (1977)Conflict of Laws
…This modification, like the accommodation to the realities of interstate corporate activities, was accomplished by use of a legal fiction that left the conceptual structure established in Pennoyer theoretically unaltered. Cf. Olberding v. Illinois Central R. Co. , 346 U. S. 338, 340-341 (1953). The fiction used was that…