Legal Definitions - recusant

A recusant individual or entity is one that refuses to comply with a command, order, or the authority of a governing body. It describes someone who resists or rejects an obligation or directive.

Here are some examples illustrating the term:

• A software company receives a subpoena from a court demanding access to certain proprietary source code as part of a legal dispute. If the company's legal team decides to challenge the subpoena and refuses to provide the code, arguing it contains trade secrets not relevant to the case, the company would be acting in a recusant manner towards the court's order.

  This example shows a refusal to comply with a direct judicial command.

• A national environmental protection agency issues a new regulation requiring all industrial factories to install specific pollution control equipment by a certain deadline. If a particular factory owner publicly declares they will not install the equipment, believing the regulation is overly burdensome and ineffective, that owner is a recusant in the context of the agency's directive.

  This illustrates a refusal to submit to a regulatory authority's command.

• During a local emergency, the mayor's office issues a mandatory curfew for all residents. A group of citizens who organize a protest during the curfew hours, intentionally defying the order, could be described as recusant individuals.

  Here, the term highlights a refusal to comply with a governmental authority's command.