Trover

Trover (/ˈtroʊvər/[1]) is a form of lawsuit in common law jurisdictions for recovery of damages for wrongful taking of personal property.

[2][3][4][5] Early trover cases involved the keeping or taking of a bailment by the bailee (the person charged to hold the property with "ordinary care").

The theory of trover was that the defendant, by "converting" the chattel to his own use, had appropriated the plaintiff's property, for which he was required to make compensation.

For instance, if an envelope of bank notes or currency were to be found, the court would attempt to identify the true owner, but this would often prove to be impossible.

[12][14][15] Sir William Holdsworth described trover as an extension of detinue, which enabled not only a bailor and a dispossessed owner, but also a third person, to whose use goods had been bailed, to get full recognition of their interests.

[6] By the end of the seventeenth century, the great bulk of litigation in England was conducted through the various forms of action which had developed from trespass.

"[17] This remark by Littleton probably only applied to the simpler form of the new pleading, which made it unnecessary to allege by what means the chattel had come into the hands of the defendant.

[23] Actions of this kind were common in the manorial courts, but an obscure note in a Year Book suggests that in 1294 detinue could be brought against a finder of a chattel.

[24] Charters, like stray cattle, had their own law with peculiar features, and these actions dealt primarily with executors who withheld the heir's title deeds which came into their hands (devenerunt ad manus) with the ancestor's chattels.

[25][26] The preoccupation of detinue with the two special cases of stray cattle and lost title-deeds persisted, and the general problem of recovering chattels which had neither been stolen or bailed was only solved with a new form of writ.

This preamble alleged that the plaintiff casually lost possession of the chattel, that the defendant had found it, refused to restore it and converted it to his own use.

[28] In 1585, Edward Coke was reluctant to allow the principle of conversion to be extended so as to enable detinue to be largely superseded by trover on the case.

He pointed out that the finder had acquired the goods which were in no danger of being lost, there was earlier authority for saying that an action for trespass could be sustained and that non-delivery constituted conversions.

[16] In the case of Cooper v. Chitty (see infra),[30] Lord Mansfield said, "In form, trover is a fiction; in substance a remedy to recover the value of personal chattels wrongly converted by another to his own use.

[clarification needed] Judge Brian said, "and I take it for clear law that he could not have action on the case if he can recover the thing intself.

This is a fragmentary case from Henry VI of England which indicates that there were sacks of flour left by the plaintiff to be stored and cared for by the defendant.

[38] In the case Isaac v Clark (1614) 2 Bulstr 306 312–313, it was laid down that a bailor could not maintain trover or detinue where he had pledged the goods, because the wrong was an offense against the possession of the bailee.

This principle of Isaac v Clark (see immediately supra) was extended in Manders v. Williams (1849) 4 Ex 339 where the court found that a bailee had a bailment for a period of time, and not merely at the will of the bailor.

[39] In Eason v Newman (1595) Cro Elizabeth 495, a finder of a chattel was held liable on the ground that he had wrongfully refused to return it to the true owner.

Even when trover was allowed to overlap trespass and replevin, which were concerned with possession, it remained necessary to define conversion, and this extension did not really affect the definition.

[40] Armory v Delamirie (1722) 1 Str 505, is a case which is frequently cited in United States Tort Law texts as the primary illustration of action in trover.

In Dockwray v Dickinson (1697) Skinner 640, it was held that where the facts indicated a conversion of a ship and cargo that the plaintiff was entitled to interest in one-sixteenth of the value of the property.

In Tinker v Poole (1770) 5 Burr 2657, Lord Mansfield overcame the technical objections (traditionally held) that a distress (holding of a chattel to induce an action from the owner) was not a disposition of goods, and that trover could be an alternative to replevin.

[56] Trover is the name of the action which lay, at common law, for the recovery of damages for the conversion of personal property in his possession, usually involving chattels held in bailment.

This is regardless of the fact that the purchaser was honestly mistaken, or acted innocently, in good faith and without knowledge of the seller's lack of authority to make the sale.

The defendant, Oulds, cut 800 walnut logs, branded them with the letter "D", then proceeded to float them down a river with the intention of recovering them downstream.

The Tennessee court quoted the English case of Bridges v. Hawkesworth[60] where the plaintiff, being in the shop of the defendant, picked up a parcel containing bank notes.

The Tennessee Supreme Court observed it is essential in cases of trover, that the property must be found; it must at the time when the finder came upon it, to have been in such a situation as to clearly indicate that it was lost.

[64] In the 1939 Texas case, the court encountered the same facts as in Zaslow v. Kroenert, except the defendant stored the furniture in his own name with the intent to keep it for himself.

873 (Minn. 1905), the Minnesota court encountered the same fact pattern as in Zaslow v. Kroenert, except that while the furniture was in the warehouse, and before the plaintiff could remove it, it was destroyed by a fire.