Law Dictionary Definitions

business associations.See BUSINESS ENTERPRISES. [Blacks Law 8th]

business agent. 1. See managing agent under AGENT. 2. A labor-union representative selected to deal with employers.[Blacks Law 8th]

business. 1. A commercial enterprise carried on for profit; a particular occupation or employment habitually engaged in for livelihood or gain. 2. Commercial enterprises <business and academia often have congruent aims>.3. Commercial transactions <the company has never done business in Louisiana>. See DOING BUSINESS. 4. By extension, transactions or matters of a noncommercial nature <the…

Bush doctrine.The policy announced by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to the effect that nations harboring terrorists will be treated as terrorists themselves and may be subject to a first-strike strategy. Cf. SOVEREIGN EQUALITY .[Blacks Law 8th]

bursting-bubble theory.Evidence. The principle that a presumption disappears once the presumed facts have been contradicted by credible evidence. [Cases: Evidence  85, 89. C.J.S. Evidence §§ 131, 135, 152–156, 160.][Blacks Law 8th]

burnt-records act.A statute that enables a property owner to quiet title if the public records forthe property have been lost or destroyed in a disaster.[Blacks Law 8th]

burlaw court.See BYRLAW COURT. [Blacks Law 8th]

burlaw. See BYRLAW.[Blacks Law 8th]

burking,n. The crime of murdering someone, usu. by smothering, for the purpose of selling the corpse. • This term arose from the Scottish murder team of Burke and Hare, whose practice in 1828 of suffocating their victims while leaving few visible marks made the corpses more salable to medical schools. — burke,vb.[Blacks Law 8th]

  buried-facts doctrine.Securities. The rule that a proxy-statement disclosure is inadequate if a reasonable shareholder could fail to understand the risks presented by facts scattered throughout the proxy. • In applying this rule, a court will consider a securities disclosure to be false and misleading if its overall significance is obscured because material information is…