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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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First published 1968 (SND Vol. VII).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

PERSONAL, adj. Sc. Law usages in n.combs.: 1. personal bar, an impediment to a right or action in law arising from a man's own previous statements or actions, = Eng. estoppel. See quots. and cf. 4. and 5. below; 2. personal diligence, the process by which a debtor's person was attached as security for his debts, i.e. the procedure of imprisonment for debt. Cf. Diligence and 3.; 3. personal execution, = 2.; 4. personal exception, = 1. (Sc. 1946 A. D. Gibb Legal Terms 64); 5. personal objection, = 1.1. Sc. 1927 Gloag and Henderson Introd. Law Scot. 27:
The principle of personal bar underlies many of the established rules of law. Thus the rule that obligations induced by fraud or misrepresentation cannot be enforced, or that the informality of an obligation may be cured by actings following on it, may be said to rest on the ground that the party against whom the rules are pleaded is personally barred from asserting a right which he would otherwise have possessed.Sc. 1946 A. D. Gibb Legal Terms 64:
A plea in defence based on this that the other party has so spoken or acted as to induce a reasonable belief in a state of matters upon the faith of which the defender has acted to his prejudice, the pursuer not being permitted to gainsay the inference to be drawn from his words or conduct.2. Sc. 1700 S.C. Misc. (1846) III. 177:
A reductione of a bond doth hinder personall diligence in a civil cace.Inv. 1721 Steuart Letter-Bk. (S.H.S.) 168:
If I am not paid befor Candlemass Ile use personall as weell as reall dilligence against them.Sc. 1773 Erskine Institute iv. iii. § 24:
The power of staying the execution of personal diligence might, if abused, greatly impair the right competent to creditors for the recovery of their debts.Sc. 1838 W. Bell Dict. Law Scot. 733–4:
The Court of Session is authorised, in certain circumstances, to grant a protection from personal diligence to a bankrupt, against whom mercantile sequestration . . . has been awarded. . . . After the expiration of two years from the date of the sequestration, the power of the Court to grant personal protections ceases.Sc. 1886 H. Goudy Law of Bankruptcy 439:
Under the old common law cessio bonorum was not so much a process of distribution as a means by which insolvent debtors were enabled to obtain protection from personal diligence.3. Sc. 1838 W. Bell Dict. Law Scot. 395:
Personal diligence, or execution in civil causes, is warranted almost exclusively by letters of horning and caption.5. Sc. 1838 W. Bell Dict. Law Scot. 733:
Personal Objection or Exception. When a party is, by his own act, or by the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed, incapacitated from maintaining a certain plea in an action or in a defence, he is said to be barred from maintaining that plea personali exceptione. Thus, one is barred personali exceptione or objectione from redarguing his own judicial assertion; — from objecting to a deed to which he has already consented; — from pleading the defect of his own or his author's title; — from taking benefit by his own fault or neglect.