fiction

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Fiction

An assumption made by a court and embodied in various legal doctrines that a fact or concept is true when in actuality it is not true, or when it is likely to be equally false and true.

A legal fiction is created for the purpose of promoting the ends of justice. A common-law action, for example, allowed a father to bring suit against his daughter's seducer, based on the legal fiction of the loss of her services. Similarly, the law of torts encompasses the legal fiction of the rule of Vicarious Liability, which renders an employer responsible for the civil wrongs of his or her employees that are committed during their course of employment. Even though the employer generally is uninvolved in the actual act constituting the tort, the law holds the employer responsible since, through a legal fiction, he or she is deemed to be in direct control of the employee's actions. A seller of real estate might, for example, be liable in an action for Fraud committed by his or her agent in the course of a sale.

fiction

noun canard, concoction, fable, fabrication, fabula, false statement, falsehood, falsification, fancy, fantasy, feigned story, figment, invention, legend, lie, myth, perjury, prevarication, product of imagination, res ficta, untruth, untruthful report
Foreign phrases: Fictio legis inique operatur alieni damnum vel injuriam.Fiction of law is wrongful if it works loss or harm to anyone. Fictio juris non est ubi veritas. A fiction of law will not exist where the fact appears. Les fictions naissent de la loi, et non la loi des fictions. Fictions arise from the law, and not law from fictions. Fictio cedit veritati. Fictio juris non est ubi veritas. Fiction yields to truth. Where truth is, fiction of law does not exist.

fiction

see LEGAL FICTION.

References in periodicals archive ?

This may be the case but look me in the eye and tell me that when confronted with finding a book that young people read for pleasure you don't automatically head for the fiction shelves?

What's in a name: National Non-Fiction Day

Gunn's concluding point is even more chilling: that the literature that will become the next science fiction won't really be science fiction.

Gunn, James. Inside Science Fiction

Good science fiction, of course, also has to tell a good story.

To infinity & beyond!

Despite such griping, fan fiction is clearly here to stay.

The fan fiction phenomena: what Faust, Hamlet, and Xena the Warrior Princess have in common

With a resurgence of science fiction and such TV series as NBC's ``Heroes'' still offering an escape from ho-hum Earth, science fiction and the fantasy world of dragons and griffins still promise an escape from an ever-shrinking world.

WHERE ARE THE FLYING CARS? SCI-FI FANS PACK 3-DAY CONVENTION

So influential has he been on the current generation of writers that Treisman says she receives at least a few fiction manuscripts each week from Saunders imitators.

George Saunders: satirist

Johnson's Buddhist perspective accounts for much of what can be understood from his fiction.

Gary Storhoff. Understanding Charles Johnson

Harlequins single-title fiction offerings "will feature novels written by and about real African American women dealing with relationships and careers, while facing life's everyday challenges," says Senior Editor Mavis Allen, who will head the line.

The color of love: Harlequin courts African American women with its own new lines and elopes with BET/Arabesque imprint

The cluster course, Tracking the Criminal through Science and Literature, links ENG 107, Detective Fiction, and SCI 150, Introduction to Forensic Science.

Detective Fiction and Forensics in collaboration

Chabon's talk could have served as a touchstone for a spirited discussion of Jewish identity, fictional representations of the Holocaust, the relationship between memory and invention, even the state of contemporary fiction.

Truth, lies, and lecture series

Johnson-Smith, a lecturer in film and TV at an English university, reaches the conclusion that unlike earlier periods of science fiction, "modern American sf fiction is neither utopian or dystopian.

American Science Fiction TV--Star-Trek, Stargate, and Beyond

2) The present demands placed upon fiction are unlike any it has experienced previously.