omission

Omission is the failure to act or to disclose information when there is a responsibility to do so. See Brown v. Standard Casket Mfg. Co., 234 Ala. 512, 175 So. 358 (1937).

It can be used in various situations and contexts:

In criminal law an omission arises from a failure to disclose essential identifying information. For example, a failure to disclose the origin of a recording may occur when the manufacturer’s name and address are not provided, or when the name of a performer or principal artist is excluded where the disclosure is required by statute.
Under property tax law, an omission may refer to a procedural defect. For example, when a town clerk was personally and timely served with petition seeking review of a real property tax assessment, giving court jurisdiction and the official notice of proceeding, service of only one copy of the petition rather than the statutorily required three copies may be treated as a curable procedural omission rather than a jurisdictional defect.
An omission is most frequently litigated in the context of fraud and securities fraud, where an omission of a material fact can be the basis for liability. For example, in Litwin v. Blackstone Group, 634 F.3d 706 (2nd Cir. 2011), the Second Circuit found Blackstone, a large investment fund, liable for securities fraud where they omitted that a significant portion of their decline in revenue derived from a single subsidiary in their initial public offering (IPO) registration statement.
[Last reviewed in January of 2026 by the Wex Definitions Team]
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