Odger's English Common Law

CONVERSION. 467
It is not necessary that the plaintiff should be the owner of
the goods, if as against the defendant he is lawfully in posses-
sion of them. Where the title in a chattel is not good against
all the world, bat is good against the defendant, the man in
possession has a right of action against the defendant if he
wrongfully deprives him of the use or possession of his
chattel.
" The law is that a person possessed of goods as his
property has a good title as against every stranger, and that
one who takes them from him, having no title in himself, is
a wrong-doer and cannot defend himself by showing that
there was title in some third person ; for against a wroDg-
doer possession is a title." 1 Even if the defendant be the
owner of the goods, it may well be that the plaintiff is
entitled to retain possession of them, e.g., if the defendant's
predecessor in title had let them to the plaintiff for a period,
which had not yet expired.
An action of conversion " will lie for grouse killed on a man's lands by a
stranger." 2
In the famous case of Armory v. Delamirie 3 a chimney-sweeper's boy
found a ring set with jewels and took it to a goldsmith's shop. The
apprentice took out the stones, offered the boy three-halfpence and, when
he refused to accept that sum, returned him the socket and retained the
stones. It was held that the boy had aititle to the jewels good against all
except the true owner, that the goldsmith was liable for the act of his
apprentice, and further that the jury, in assessing damages, should assume
that the jewels were of the finest water, unless the defendant proved that such
was not the case. Bare possession, therefore, gives a sufficient legal title
to enable the plaintiff to sue for any injury to the goods.
But the purchaser of goods which remain in the vendor's possession
subject to his lien for unpaid purchase-money cannot maintain an action
of conversion against a stranger who wrongfully takes them out of the
vendor's possession ;
for though the purchaser is the owner of fhe goods, he
has no right to the immediate possession of them. Only the vendor could
sue in such a case. 4
Again, an action of conversion will not lie for current money ; for the
former owner of it has no right to the return of the identical coins. It is
otherwise in the case of an ancient or foreign coin, which has an identity
of its own. 6
i Per Lord Campbell, C. J., in Jeffries v. G. W.Ry. Co. (1856), 5 B. & B. at p. 805,
2 Per Parker, J., in Fitzhardinge v. Purcell, [1908] 2 Ch. at p. 168 ; and see
Hadesden v. Oryssel (1607), Cro. Jac. 195 ; Sutton v. Moody (1697), 1 Ld. Raym. 250.
3 (1722), 1 Str. 605 ; 1 Smith, L. O, 12th ed., 396.
* Lord v. Price (1874), L. E. 9 Ex. 54.
" « Orion v. Butler (1822), 5 B. & Aid. 652.
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