Tabula in naufragio

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Tabula in naufragio is a legal Latin phrase, literally interpreted as "a plank in a shipwreck".

The phrase is used metaphorically to designate the power subsisting in a third (or subsequent) mortgagee, who took the third mortgage without notice of the second mortgage, and then acquired the first mortgage and attached it to the third mortgage, thereby obtaining priority over the second mortgagee.

According to Black's Law Dictionary:

"It may be fairly said that the doctrine survives only in the unjust and much criticised English rule of tacking."

The phrase was first attributed to Sir Matthew Hale, although Hale died over 200 years before the advent of the modern English doctrine of tacking.^[1]