transitory action

This development led to a distinction between local and transitory actions.

Transitory actions (such as breach of contract or trespass to the person) had no such necessary connection.

With transitory actions, venue remained only a limitation on the verbal formula by which the plaintiff might frame a cause of action.

Mr Serra’s famous “Verb List” has come to be seen as transitory action in the infinitive case, and the pieces it inspired are among his most original.

In the early development of the law relating to transitory actions, the rule was loosened so that the plaintiff may specify the venue in any county he/she desired.

If the matter had arisen outside England (i.e. a foreign locality), the legal fictions employed in transitory actions were not applicable, and so jury could be summoned to try the facts in issue.

Vinelott J in Tyburn Productions v Conan Doyle reasoned that it was too late for the courts to overturn the distinctions between local and transitory actions because it is settled.

The common law transitory torts doctrine, which holds that causes based on a transitory action arising abroad may be considered as happening domestically, does not help rebut the presumption because that is not the only necessary meaning of the statute's text.