(1) Business when two companies merge or join together to become one entity. (2) (A) Where a greater and lesser thing meet, and the latter loses its separate existence and sinks into the former. It is applied to estates, rights, crimes, and torts. (B) estates. When a greater estate and less coincide and meet in one and the same person, without any intermediate estate, the less is immediately merged, that is, sunk or drowned in the latter; example, if there be a tenant for years, and the reversion in fee simple descends to, or is purchased by him, the term of years is merged in the inheritance, and no longer exists; but they must be to one and the same person, at one and the same time, in one and the same right. 2. The estate in which the merger takes place, is not enlarged by the accession of the preceding estate; and the greater, or only subsisting estate, continues, after the merger, precisely of the same quantity and extent of ownership, as it was before the accession of the estate which is merged, and the lesser estate is extinguished. Prest. on Conv. 7. As a general rule, equal estates will not drown in each other. 3. The merger is produced, either from the meeting of an estate of higher degree, with an estate of inferior degree; or from the meeting of the particular estate and the immediate reversion, in the same person. 4 Kent, Com. 98. Vide 3 Prest. on Conv. which is devoted to this subject. (C) crim. law. When a man commits a great crime which includes a lesser, the latter is merged in the former. 2. Murder, when committed by blows, necessarily includes an assault and battery; a battery, an assault; a burglary, when accompanied with a felonious taking of personal property, a larceny in all these, and similar cases, the lesser crime is merged in the greater. 3. But when one offence is of the same character with the other, there is no merger; as in the case of a conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor, and the misdemeanor is afterwards committed in pursuance of the conspiracy. The two crimes being of equal degree, there can be no legal merger. 4 Wend. R. 265. Vide Civil Remedy. (D) rights. Rights are said to be merged when the same person who is bound to pay is also entitled to receive. This is more properly called a confusion of rights, or extinguishment. 2. When there is a confusion of rights, and the debtor and creditor become the same person, there can be no right to put in execution; but there is an immediate merger. 2 Ves. jr. 264. Example: a man becomes indebted to a woman in a sum of money, and afterwards marries her, there is immediately a confusion of rights, and the debt is merged or extinguished. (E) torts. Where a person in committing a felony also commits a tort against a private person; in this case, the wrong is sunk in the felony, at least, until after the felon’s conviction. 2. The old maxim that a trespass is merged in a felony, has sometimes been supposed to mean that there is no redress by civil action for an injury which amounts to a felony. But it is now established that the defendant is liable to the party injured either after his conviction; If the civil action be commenced before, the plaintiff will be nonsuited.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
The fusion or absorption of one thing or right into another; generally spoken of a case where one of the subjects is of less dignity or importance than the other. Here the less important ceases to have an independent existence. In real property law. It is a general principle of law that where a greater estate and a less coincide and meet in one and the same person, without any intermediate estate, the less is immediately annihilated, or, in the law phrase, is said to be merged, that is, sunk or drowned, in the greater. Thus, if there be tenant for years, and the reversion in fee simple descends to or is purchased by him, the term of years is merged in the inheritance, and shall never exist any more. 2 Bl. Comm. 177; 1 Steph. Comm. 293; 4 Kent, Comm. 99. James v. Morey, 2 Cow. (N. Y.) 300, 14 Am. Dec. 475; Duncan v. Smith, 31 N. J. Law, 327. Of rights. This term, as applied to rights, is equivalent to “confusio” in the Roman law, and indicates that where the qualities of debtor and creditor become united in the same individual, there arises a confusion of rights which extinguishes both qualities; whence, also, merger is often called “extinguishment.” Brown. Rights of action. In the law relating to rights of action, when a person takes or acquires a remedy or security of a higher nature, 4n legal estimation, than the one which he already possesses for the same right, then his remedies in respect of the minor right or security merge in those attaching to the higher one. Leake, Cont. 506; 10 O. B. 561. As where a claim is merged in the judgment recovered upon it. In criminal law. When a man commits a great crime which includes a lesser, or commits a felony which includes a fort against a private person, the latter is merged in the former. 1 East, P. C. 411. Of corporations. A merger of corporations consist in the uniting of two or more corporations by the transfer of property of all to one of them, which continues in existence, the others being swallowed up or merged therein. In regard to the survivorship of one of the constituent corporations, it differs from a “consolidation,” wherein all the consolidating companies surrender their separate existence and become parts of a new corporation.