Amotion

Putting out; removal; taking away; dispossession of lands.

Amotion essentially means the deprivation of possession. The term has been used to describe a wrongful seizure of personal chattels.

The most common legal use of the word is in corporation law. In that context, amotion is the ousting of an officer from his or her post in the corporation prior to the end of the term for which the officer was appointed or elected, without taking away the person's right to be a member of the corporation. It can be distinguished from Disfranchisement, which is the total expulsion of a corporation's officer or official representative.

AMOTION. In corporations and companies, is the act of removing an officerfrom his office; it differs from disfranchisement, which is applicable tomembers, as such. Wille. on Corp. n. 708. The power of amotion is incidentto a corporation. 2 Str. 819; 1 Burr. 639.
2. In Rex v. Richardson, Lord Mansfield specified three sorts ofoffences for which an officer might be discharged; first, such as have noimmediate relation to the office, but are in themselves of so infamous anature, as to render the offender unfit to execute any public franchise;secondly, such as are only against his oath, and the duty of his office as acorporator, and amount to breaches of the tacit condition annexed to hisoffice; thirdly, the third offence is of a mixed nature; as being an offencenot only against the duty of his officer but also a matter indictable atcommon law. 2 Binn. R. 448. And Lord Mansfield considered the law assettled, that though a corporation has express power of amotion, yet for thefirst sort of offences there must be a previous indictment and conviction;and that there was no authority since Bagg's Case, 11 Rep. 99, which says;that the power of trial as well as of amotion, for the second offense, isnot incident to every corporation. He also observed: "We think that from thereason of the thing, from the nature of the corporation, and for the sake oforder and good government, this power is incident as much as the power ofmaking bylaws." Doug. 149.
See generally, Wilcock on Mun. Corp. 268; 6 Conn. Rep. 632; 6 Mass. R.462; Ang. & Am. on Corpor. 236.

AMOTION, tort. An amotion of possession from an estate, is an ouster whichhappens by a species of disseisin or turning out of the legal proprietorbefore his estate is determined. 3 Bl. Com. 198, 199. Amotion is alsoapplied to personal chattels when they are taken unlawfully out of thepossession of the owner, or of one who has a special property in them.