Legal Term: BILL PENAL

Definition: contracts. A written obligation, by which a debtor acknowledges himself indebted in a certain sum, may one hundred dollars, and for the payment of the debt binds himself in a larger sum, say two hundred dollars. Bills penal do not frequently occur in modern practice, bonds, with conditions, have superseded them. Steph. on Pl. 265, note. See 2 Vent. 198. Bills-penal are sometimes called bills obligatory. Cro. Car. 515, 2 Vent. 106. But a bill obligatory is not necessarily a bill penal. Com. Dig. Obligations, D.

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