Iii.—: Injuries to Reversion.

Wrongs to an owner not in possession. A person in possession of property may do wrong by refusing to deliver possession to a person entitled, or by otherwise assuming to deal with the property as owner or adversely to the true owner, or by dealing with it under colour of his real possessory title but in excess of his rights, or, where the nature of the object admits of it, by acts amounting to destruction or total change of character, such as breaking up land by opening mines, burning wood, grinding corn, or spinning cotton into yarn, which acts however are only the extreme exercise of assumed dominion. The law started from entirely distinct conceptions of the mere detaining of property from the person entitled, and the spoiling or altering it to the prejudice of one in reversion or remainder, or a general owner. For the former case the common law provided its most ancient remedies—the writ of right (and later the various assizes and the writ of entry) for land, and the parallel writ of detinue (parallel as being merely a variation of the writ of debt, which was precisely similar in form to the writ of right) for goods; to this must be added, in special, but once frequent and important cases, replevin. For the latter the writ of waste (as extended by the Statutes of Marlbridge and Gloucester) was available as to land; later this was supplanted by an action on the case “in the nature of waste,” and in modern times the power and remedies of courts of equity have been found still more effectual. The process of devising a practical remedy for owners of chattels was more circuitous; they were helped by an action on the case which became a distinct species under the name of trover, derived from the usual though not necessary form of pleading, which alleged that the defendant found the plaintiff’s goods and converted them to his own use. The original notion of conversion in personal chattels answers closely to that of waste in tenements; but it was soon extended so as to cover the whole ground of detinue, and largely overlap trespass; a mere trespasser whose acts would have amounted to conversion if done by a lawful possessor not being allowed to take exception to the true owner “waiving the trespass,” and professing to assume in the defendant’s favour that his possession had a lawful origin.