Actions on the case for conversion

The action of detinue was unsatisfactory for plaintiffs in that defendants could escape by waging law, and indeed could truthfully deny a detainer of goods if they had destroyed or parted with them. The action on the case offered a solution. This chapter shows how it was first used against bailees who converted goods by damaging or destroying them. The extension to finders, including constructive ‘finders’, by a subtle shift in the meaning of ‘conversion’, provoked a controversy between the King’s Bench and the Common Pleas similar to that over the use of assumpsit to replace debt. It was resolved in favour of allowing the action, but with the qualification that not every detainer was a conversion. In its settled form, ‘trover and conversion’ was an action to try the relative title of the parties rather than an action in tort based on fault.