Continued operation; work. 2. The labor and skill of one man is frequently used in a partnership, and valued as equal to the capital of another. 3. When business has been done for another, and suit is brought to recover a just reward, there is generally contained in the declaration, a count for work and labor. 4. Where penitentiaries exist, persons who have committed crimes are condemned to be imprisoned therein at labor.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
1. Work; toil; service. Continued exertion, of the more onerous and inferior kind, usually and chiefly consisting in the protracted expenditure of muscular force, adapted to the accomplishment of specific useful ends. It is used in this sense in several legal phrases, such as “a count for work and labor,” “wages of labor,” etc.”Labor,” “business,” and “work” are not synonyms. Labor may be business, but it is not necessarily so; and business is not always labor. Labor implies toil: exertion producing weariness; manual exertion of a toilsome nature. Making an agreement for the sale of a chattel is not within a prohibition of common labor upon Sunday, though it is (if by a merchant in his calling) within a prohibition upon business. Bloom v. Richards, 2 Ohio St. 387. Common labor, within the meaning of Sunday laws, is not to be restricted to manual or physical labor, but Includes the transaction of ordinary business, trading, and the execution of notes and other instruments.
2. A Spanish land measure, in use in Mexico and formerly in Texan, equivalent to 1771 acres.