page_title: Trover
section_title: Trover as a branch of assumpsit
hierarchical_section_title: Trover / Trover as a branch of assumpsit
caption_attribution_description: Procession portrait of Elizabeth I of England (detail)
context_page_description: Trover is a form of lawsuit in common-law countries for recovery of damages for wrongful taking of personal property. Trover belongs to a series of remedies for such wrongful taking, its distinctive feature being recovery only for the value of whatever was taken, not for the recovery of the property itself.
context_section_description: Trover has been described as an action in assumpsit which arose from the quare writs by adding the cum (Latin: "with") which, then could allege that the defendant undertook (assumpsit, "assumed the risk", or "assumed the duty"), to do something.  Another clause which followed some time later contained the allegation of trover, and deals with situations which involved neither bailment nor a trespassory taking. In Bracton's day the appeal of larceny could be changed into an action de re adirata by omitting the words of felony. By this means a chattel could be recovered against a finder. If the finder refused in court to restore the chattel as adirata, the plaintiff could refile the claim ("claims afresh"), this time adding the word felony, indicating the action was for a real theft, and conversion.
  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.  Cases of lost cattle had their own law, and never fit into the forms of trover. Detinue against the finder of a charter seems to have found its way into the common law by 1389.
  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. In 1455 Littleton explained the "new found haliday" which consisted in counting upon the finding (invencio) instead of the traditional devenerunt.
  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 was invented by adding a novel preamble to be inserted in the writ ostensurus quare.  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.  The full development of trover and conversion is seen by 1510. A discussion of more modern cases of a bailee (holder) in possession of a title-deed is found in Columbia Law Review.
  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.  Coke laid down the first principles applicable to conversion. 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.  Consequently, the wrongful refusal to deliver on demand because evidence of a conversion, and this, after some vacillation is now the law. It was a rivalry between the various courts developing legal systems of the country which gave an impetus to the growth of the more modern remedies.
  Trover became the accepted action for all wrongs to chattels. In the case of Cooper v. Chitty (see infra), 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.  The form supposes a defendant may have come lawfully by the possession of the goods." The fiction was the allegation that the finding in trover was an accident.  It was the plaintiff who wanted return of the chattel, which had been converted to the use of the defendant.
caption: Action in trover became fully defined during the reign of Elizabeth I of England.
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