Ejectment is a common law term for civil action to recover the possession of or title to land.
[1] It replaced the old real actions and the various possessory assizes (denoting county-based pleas to local sittings of the courts) where boundary disputes often featured.
Originally, successful ejectment meant recovery of possession of land, for example against a defaulting tenant or a trespasser, who did not have (or once had no longer did) any right to remain there.
You are proposing to use against him an action in which he may be imprisoned and outlawed, while, supposing that he is in the wrong, the law has provided other forms of action which do not permit this procedure against his person...[A] dodge was discovered by which the action of ejectment (ejectione firmae) could be made generally available as a means of enabling any claimant to recover possession of land... You are in possession of land of which I say that I am the true owner, the tenant in fee simple.
I do in fact enter and then and there make a lease for years to a third person, John Doe.
I put John Doe as tenant upon the land and he is ousted not by you but by a fourth person, William Stiles.
[4]Such fictitious actions have been abolished in many jurisdictions as a result of the provision of alternative remedies.