discharge

To release; liberate; annul; unburden; disincumber; dismiss. To extinguish an obligation (e.g. a person's liability on an instrument); terminate employment of person; release, as from prison, confinement or military service. Discharge is a generic term; its principal species-aTeT rescission, release, accord and satisfaction, performance, judgment, composition, bankruptcy, merger. In contract law, discharge occurs either when the parties have performed their obligations in the contract, or when events, the conduct of the parties, or the operation of law releases the parties from performing. As applied to demands, claims, rights of action, incumbrances, etc., to discharge the debt or claim is to extinguish it, to annul its obligatory force, to satisfy it. And here also the term is generic; thus a debt, a mortgage, a legacy, may be discharged by payment or performance, or by any act short of that, lawful in itself, which the creditor accepts as sufficient. U.C.C. No. 3-601 et seq. governs discharge of commercial instruments. To discharge a person is to liberate him from the binding force of an obligation, debt, or claim.

See also performance

- release.

Bankruptcy. The release of a debtor from all of his debts which are provable in bankruptcy, except such as are excepted by the Bankruptcy Code. The discharge of the debtor is the step which regularly follows the filing of a petition in bankruptcy and the administration of his estate. By it the debtor is released from the obligation of all his debts which were or might be proved in the proceedings, so that they are no longer a charge upon him, and so that he may thereafter engage in business and acquire property without its being liable for the satisfaction of such former debts. Bankruptcy Code No.No. 523, 524.

See also bankruptcy proceedings.

Constructive discharge. That which occurs when an employer deliberately makes an employee's working conditions so intolerable that the employee is forced into involuntary resignation. Pittman v. Hattiesburg Municipal Separate School Dist, C.A.Miss., 644 F.2d 1071, 1077.

Contract. To cancel the obligation of a contract; to make an agreement or contract null and inoperative. As a noun, the word means the act or instrument by which the binding force of a contract is terminated, irrespective of whether the contract is carried out to the full extent contemplated (in which case the discharge is the result of performance) or is broken off before complete execution.

Criminal law.

The act by which a person in confinement, held on an accusation of some crime or misdemeanor, is set at liberty.

Employment.

To dismiss from employment; to terminate the employment of a person. Hunn v. City of Madison Heights, 60 Mich.App. 326, 230 N.W.2d 414, 418.

Equity practice.

In the process of accounting before a master in chancery, the discharge is a statement of expenses and counter-claims brought in and filed, by way of set-off, by the accounting defendant; which follows the charge in order.

Jury.

To discharge a jury is to relieve them from any further consideration of a cause. This is done when the continuance of the trial is, by any cause, rendered impossible; also when the jury, after deliberation, has rendered a verdict or cannot agree on a verdict.

Military discharge.

The release or dismissal of a soldier, sailor, or marine, from further military service, either at the expiration of his term of enlistment, or previous thereto on special application therefor, or as a punishment. An "honorable" discharge is one granted at the end of an enlistment and accompanied by an official certificate of good conduct during the service. A "dishonorable" discharge is a dismissal from the service for bad conduct or as a punishment imposed by sentence of a court-martial for offenses against the military law. There is also in occasional use a form of "discharge without honor," which implies censure, but is not in itself a punishment.

Mortgage

Formal document which recites that a mortgage debt has been satisfied and which is generally recorded in Registry of Deeds (or comparable recording body) or in other appropriate place for recording deeds to real estate