(A) Employment: A physical, sensory or mental impairment that significantly affects the life of the person. Special anti-discrimination laws are in effect to protect employees with a disability. (B) Contract Law: The want of legal capacity to do a thing. 2. Persons may be under disability, 1. To make contracts. 2. To bring actions. 3. 1. Those who want understanding; as idiots, lunatics, drunkards, and infants or freedom to exercise their will, as married women, and persons in duress; or who, in consequence of their situation, are forbidden by the policy of the law to enter into contracts, as trustees, executors, administrators, or guardians, are under disabilities to make contracts. See Pa7-ties; Contracts. 4. 2. The disabilities to sue are, 1. Alienage, when the alien is an enemy. Bac. Ab. Abatement, B 3; Id. Alien, E: Com. Dig. Abatement , K; Co. Litt. 129. 2. Coverture; unless as co-plaintiff with her husband, a married woman cannot sue. 3. Infancy; unless he appears by guardian or prochein ami. 4. That no such person as that named has any existence, is not, or never was, in rerum natura. By the law of England there are other disabilities; these are, 1. Outlawry. 2. Attainder. 3. Praemunire. 4. Popish recusancy. 5. Monachism. 5. In the acts of limitation it is provided that persons lying under certain disabilities, such as being non compos, an infant, in prison, or under coverture, shall have the right to bring actions after the disability shall have been removed. 6. In the construction of this saving in the acts, it has been decided that two disabilities shall not be joined when they occur in different persons; as, if a right of entry accrue to a feme covert, and during the coverture she die, and the right descends to her infant son. But the rule is otherwise when there are several disabilities in the same person; as, if the right accrues to an infant, and before he has attained his full age, he becomes non compos mentis; in this case he may establish his right after the removal of the last disability.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
The want of legal ability or capacity to exercise legal rights, either special’Or ordinary, or to do certain acts with proper legal effect, or to en joy. certain privileges or powers of free action. Berkin v. Marsh, 18 Mont. 152, 44 Pac. 528, 56 Am. St Rep. 565. At the present day, disability is generally used to indicate an Incapacity for the full enjoyment of ordinary legal rights; thus married women, persons under age, insane persons, and felons convict are said to be under disability. Sometimes the term is used in a more limited sense, as when it signifies an impediment to marriage, or the’ restraints placed upon clergymen by reason of their spiritual avocations. Mozley A Whitley.
Classification. Disability is either general or special; the former when it incapacitates the person for the performance of all legal acts of a general class, or giving to them their ordinary legal effect; the Tatter when it debars him from one specific act. Disability is also either personal or absolute; the former where it attaches to the particular person, and arises out of his status, his previous act, or his natural or juridical incapacity; the latter where it originates with a particular person, but extends also to his descendants or successors. Lord de le Warre’s Case, 6 Coke, la; Avegno v. Schmidt 113 U. S. 293, 5 Sup. Ct. 487, 28 L. Ed. 976. Considered with special reference to the capacity to contract a marriage, disability is either canonical or civil; a disability of the former class makes the marriage voidable only, while the latter, in general, avoids it entirely. The term civil disability is also used as equivalent to legal disability, both these expressions meaning disabilities or disqualifications created by positive law, as distinguished from physical disabilities. Ingalls v. Campbell, 18 Or. 461, 24 Pac. 904; Hariand v. Territory, 3 Wash. T. 131, 13 Pac. 453; Meeks v. Vassault 16 Fed. Cas. 1317; Wiesner v. Zaum, 39 Wis. 206; Bauman v. Gmbbs, 26 Ind. 421; Supreme Council v. Fairman, 62 How. Prac. (N. Y.) 390. A physical disability is a disability or Incapacity caused by physical defect or infirmity, or bodily imperfection, or mental weakness or alienation ; as distinguished from civil disability, whch relates to the civil status or condition of the person, and is imposed by the law.