Opinion ID: 1097764
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the conversion count

Text: Proper submission of a conversion count to a jury requires a plaintiff to produce evidence from which reasonable jurors could infer a wrongful taking or a wrongful detention or interference, or an illegal assumption of ownership, or an illegal use or misuse of plaintiff's property or rights in property. Ott v. Fox, Ala., 362 So.2d 836, 839 (1978). Empiregas argues that it exercised a legitimate contractual right when it removed its regulator from its gas tank, and cannot be guilty of conversion where it retrieved possession of its own property. Empiregas converted, if anything, the regulator itself. The parties dispute whether the removal was contractually authorized. In any case, ownership by the converter does not prevent a conversion. Conversion lies where there has been wrongful exercise of dominion over property in exclusion or defiance of a plaintiff's rights, where said plaintiff has ... the immediate right to possession. Ott v. Fox, supra . We need not decide whether the contract authorized Empiregas to enter upon Mrs. Geary's property and remove the regulator. The company's subsequent conduct is sufficient basis for finding that Mrs. Geary had a right to immediate possession which was subject to conversion. Russell-Vaughn Ford, Inc. v. Rouse, 281 Ala. 567, 206 So.2d 371 (1968). In other words, once Empiregas became aware of the reasons the gas was purchased elsewhere, and no longer persisted in the position that her breach terminated the contract, then the further retention of the regulator could have constituted conversion. Reasonable jurors could infer that retention of the regulator for nine days after Empiregas promised to immediately return it constituted a wrongful detention or interference with Mrs. Geary's possessory interest. Thus, the trial court did not err in submitting the conversion claim to the jury.