Construction law

The thirty-seventh entry is a responsabilidade solidária, and the English term for it contains the one word an ordinary reader is certain to misread. That term is « joint and several liability », and « several » in it has nothing to do with quantity. In everyday English « several » means a good few, more than two and fewer than many. In law it means separate, taken one at a time, and that is the older sense: the word came in from Anglo-Norman, built on the Latin separ, apart, and the counting sense grew out of things considered one by one. So builders who are « jointly liable » must be sued together; builders who are « severally liable » each answer for their own share and no more; and builders who are « jointly and severally liable » are both at once, which is what the sentence on this page says — the whole may be demanded from one alone. The trap is exact. « Several liability » standing by itself is the opposite of a responsabilidade solidária, so a contract that quietly drops the word « joint » has halved what each builder owes.