Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

rule of capture

1. The doctrine that if the donee of a general power of appointment manifests an intent to assume control of the property for all purposes and not just for the purpose of appointing it to someone, the donee captures the property and the property goes to the donee's estate. 9 One common way for the donee to show an intent to assume control for all purposes is to include provisions in his or her will blending the appointing property with the donee's own property. 2. Property. The principle that wild animals belong to the person who captures them, regardless of whether they were originally on another person's land. 3. Water law. The principle that a surface landowner can extract and appropriate all the groundwater beneath the land by drilling or pumping, even if doing so drains away groundwaters to the point of drying up springs and wells from which other landowners benefit. ( This doctrine has been widely abolished or limited by legislation. 4. Oil & gas. The principle that the owner of a mineral right covering migratory (sometimes termed "fugacious") substances can extract and appropriate them by drilling or pumping, subject to the prior or contemporaneous capture of the same minerals by another mineral-rights holder into the same subterraneous mineral deposit elsewhere. - Also termed doctrine of capture; law of capture.