e wrong
have occupied the attention of many learned writers, and the incidents
of actions to assert the rights of the true owner form a considerable
part of treatises on the rules and forms of civil pleading. There are
many ways in which the wrong may be committed. In some cases the
exercise of the dominion may amount to an act of trespass or to a crime,
e.g. where the taking amounts to larceny, or fraudulent appropriation by
a bailee or agent entrusted with the property of another (Larceny Acts
of 1861 and 1901). But in such cases, except where money is taken, the
civil remedy of the owner is by action for conversion or detention of
the property, subject in the case of larceny to the rule that criminal
prosecution should precede restitution by the taker. The remedy in use
in these cases used to be by what was called an action on the case for
trover and conversion, the plaintiff putting aside all suggestions of
trespass and of crime, and resting his case on the fiction that the
defendant had found and used goods not his own. The fictitious averment
of loss was abolished in 1852, and under the present procedure, in which
the old forms of action are not in use, the remedy is by a claim (still
usually called conversion) for wrongfully depriving the true owner of
personal property of its use by some specified act inconsistent with his
dominion over it, usually by dealing with the property in a manner
inconsistent with the owner's rights. Originally, the action of trover
and conversion was limited to goods and chattels, but it is now accepted
as applying to valuable securities, such as cheques and bills of
exchange.

The gist of the action is in the unauthorized dealing, for however short
a time and for however limited a purpose, with the personal property of
another. Even refusal to deliver up to the owner is sufficient to prove
conversion, though it is often made the ground of an action for
detinue, if the plaintiff desires to have the property returned in
specie. The knowledge, motive or good faith of the person wrongfully
dealing with the property of another is for civil purposes immaterial,
and the action is often brought to try the title of two claimants to the
same goods; e.g. where a person who has innocently bought or taken in
pledge goods stolen or illegally procured resists the claim of the
original owner for the return of the goods. A warehouseman may render
himself liable to the owner of goods deposited with him