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73-624: The Federal Equity Rules were court rules that, until 1938, governed civil procedure in suits of equity in federal courts . The Rules were established by the United States Supreme Court which was authorized by the United States Congress to make rules governing the form of mesne process , form and mode of proceeding in suits of equity and the power to proscribe form of process, mode of framing and filing of proceedings or pleading and generally regulate

146-404: A certain state of facts until the opposite is proved, such as the presumption of legitimacy . The term legal fiction is sometimes used in a pejorative way. Jeremy Bentham was a famous historical critic of legal fictions. Proponents of legal fictions, particularly of their use historically, identify legal fictions as " scaffolding around a building under construction ". Child adoption

219-494: A frosty reception from judges and lawyers throughout the United States, as everyone feared that their own favorite local procedure might fall victim to such a standardization process. The final version of the bill was heavily watered down so that it merely required all federal district courts to appoint committees of local attorneys and judges to study the possibility of reorganizing and simplifying their local rules. In

292-492: A good faith attempt to confer with the opponent in advance to avoid unnecessary motion practice, and whether a "separate statement" summarizing the issues to be decided must be concurrently filed. District courts also vary widely in the extent to which local custom is actually codified to any extent in local rules, or in standing orders issued by individual district judges (which may be posted on Web sites or actually filed separately for each case), or simply not codified at all. In

365-413: A hearing date must be reserved in advance, whether the movant even gets a hearing for oral argument (some district courts assume that motions are to be heard unless expressly taken off calendar while in others there is no hearing unless expressly ordered), whether the briefing schedule is calculated from date of filing of motion papers or date of motion hearing, whether the motion papers must show evidence of

438-466: A justification in itself for restrictions on interstate practice. However, Congress has been unable to complete the unification of federal civil procedure in a fashion that would be satisfactory to judges and lawyers in all states. A study of the federal district courts in the mid-1980s found that they had developed a broad range of approaches to filling in the critical gaps in the FRCP. These ranged from

511-596: A law which stated that such courts would follow the civil procedure in effect at the time those states joined the Union. Unfortunately for the federal courts, state civil procedure law began to diverge dramatically in the mid-19th century. In the 1840s, the law reformer David Dudley Field II launched a movement away from common law pleading and towards what came to be called "code pleading." Common law pleading operated under ad hoc procedures that developed haphazardly through case law —the forms of action . In other words,

584-518: A lawsuit is a type of legal fiction. The fiction of Doe and Roe being the guardians of undisclosed parties who wish to bring suit, or the names of parties unknown, remains in some jurisdictions although not in England . The fiction about Doe being left homeless by Roe, used often in property law, however, has been abolished in every common law jurisdiction. The common law had a procedure whereby title to land could be put in direct issue, called

657-753: A legal fiction extended the jurisdiction of the Court of the Exchequer to all types of cases involving debt . The Exchequer had a much lighter caseload than the King's Bench and other courts in England. Litigants would commence an action in the Exchequer Court by pleading that they owed money to the King, which they could not pay because their debtor had in turn wrongfully withheld payment to them. The debt owed to

730-433: A new system now called "notice pleading," based on the idea that a complaint should merely give "notice" that the defendant is being sued, and allow the plaintiff to use the machinery of the courts to compel discovery of evidence from the defendant which would help the plaintiff prove his case. And of course, the defendant could compel discovery of evidence from the plaintiff to support his defenses. The FRCP also introduced

803-599: A number of innovations such as Rule 16 pretrial conferences, which gave judges a method for managing caseloads more aggressively and urging parties to reach settlements. Having completed its initial task, the Advisory Committee survived for almost twenty years. In 1941, 1946, and 1948, the Supreme Court adopted the Committee's proposed revisions to the FRCP, but for reasons that were never disclosed,

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876-578: A parent dies alongside a child, who has a child of his/her own, the rule of the elder predeceasing the child will allow the grandchild (typically) to inherit both, the parent directly and grandparent indirectly, with the parent instantaneously inheriting and then bequeathing. The doctrine of survival, although still existing in England, has been abolished in many U.S. states by the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act . The use of John Doe or Jane Roe to identify an undisclosed party in

949-538: A particular procedure was followed just because some (often ancient) decision said so, but none of those decisions were looking at whether the entire procedural system made sense. Because the evolution of the forms of action was severely limited by the Provisions of Oxford (1258), pleaders had to resort to awkward workarounds such as legal fictions which had become quite ludicrous by the 19th century. Legal fictions served only to obscure rather than illuminate what

1022-414: A procedure to determine title via trial by jury . This is the origin of the names John Doe and Richard Roe for anonymous parties. The fiction of Doe, Roe, and the leases was not challenged by the parties unless they wished to stake their life on a trial by combat. Wager of battle fell into disuse by the end of the thirteenth century though it was not abolished in England until 1819. In cases where

1095-408: A settlement. U.S. courts pioneered the concept of the opt-out class action , by which the burden falls on class members to notify the court that they do not wish to be bound by the judgment, as opposed to opt-in class actions, where class members must join into the class. Another unique feature is the so-called American Rule under which parties generally bear their own attorneys' fees (as opposed to

1168-733: A single local rule in the Middle District of Georgia, to the 34 local rules of the Central District of California (which were loaded with so many subparts that they actually amounted to 434 local rules). The original version of the bill that became the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 included a clause that would have impliedly forced the federal judiciary to develop and adopt a truly comprehensive package of procedural rules that would be uniformly applied in all federal district courts. The draft bill encountered

1241-425: A state's common law pleading system was always constantly evolving through case law , the federal courts in that state were literally frozen in time (a concept now known as "static conformity"). The Process Acts of 1789 and 1792 did not expressly address the problem of what procedural laws to apply in the federal courts in new states that joined the Union after the original Thirteen Colonies. In 1828, Congress enacted

1314-415: A uniform system of modern notice pleading in all federal courts. There are exceptions to the types of cases that the FRCP now control but they are few in number and somewhat esoteric (e.g., " prize proceedings in admiralty "). The FRCP drafters were heavily influenced by the elegance of civil procedure in certain code pleading states, particularly California and Minnesota . However, the FRCP went to

1387-439: Is a legal fiction in that the adoptive parents become the legal parents, notwithstanding the lack of a biological relationship. Once an order or judgment of adoption is entered, the biological parents become legal strangers to the child, legally no longer related nor with any rights related to the child. Conversely, the adoptive parents are legally considered to be parents of the adopted child. A new birth certificate reflecting this

1460-409: Is issued, which is a legal fiction. If two or more people die within a period of time or in a manner that renders it impossible to tell the order in which they died, the older of the two is considered to have died first. This is in order to safeguard the operation of certain general legal rules, e.g. in inheritance law , where the younger person will inherit the older, hence being able to pass on. If

1533-415: Is turned down because the joint rule "... is a legal fiction, and legal fictions are solemn things." In the novel Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) by Hope Mirrlees , the concept of the legal fiction as a secular substitute for spiritual mysteries and magical illusions is a central theme. Legal fictions in the novel include referring to fairy fruit, mention of which is taboo, as woven silk fabric in order to allow

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1606-605: The Mabo case, where the High Court of Australia rejected previous authorities that held that Indigenous Australians were too "low in the scale of social organization" at the time of British settlement to be capable of holding title to land. William Blackstone defended legal fictions, observing that legislation is never free from the iron law of unintended consequences . Using the metaphor of an ancient castle , Blackstone opined: We inherit an old Gothic castle, erected in

1679-484: The English Rule of "loser pays"), though American legislators and courts have carved out numerous exceptions. Note that the following states do not have a single code or set of civil procedure rules for their trial courts: Delaware , Indiana , Maryland , New Hampshire , New Mexico , Rhode Island , and Washington . Legal fiction Legal fictions are different from legal presumptions which assume

1752-564: The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) on June 3, 1935. Mitchell was appointed as the Advisory Committee's first chairman (a position he would hold until his death in 1955) and Clark was appointed as the Committee's Reporter. The Advisory Committee's initial membership in 1935 included several prominent lawyers and politicians of the era, including George W. Wickersham , Armistead Mason Dobie , George Donworth , and Scott Loftin . Other prominent persons who were appointed later to

1825-711: The United States Court for China . Frustration with the status quo caused the American Bar Association to launch a nationwide movement for reform of federal civil procedure in 1911. After years of bitter infighting within the American bench and bar, the federal procedural reform movement culminated in the enactment of the Rules Enabling Act on June 19, 1934. The Supreme Court at first took little interest in exercising

1898-684: The cause of action . By 1897, 27 states had enacted versions of the Field Code. As of that same year, common law pleading despite extensive statutory modifications remained the dominant procedure in 13 states, the Territory of New Mexico, and the District of Columbia. And seven more states had not enacted formal "codes of civil procedure", but had enacted "fairly complete statutory systems" which incorporated elements of both code pleading and common law pleading and in general were more analogous to

1971-489: The state supreme court or the state bar association. The position taken by these states is that to protect the rights of the citizens of a representative democracy , civil procedure should be directly managed by legislators elected by the people on a frequent basis, not judges who are subject only to relatively infrequent retention elections (California) or direct elections (Illinois and New York). (All three states have strong traditions of popular sovereignty ; they are among

2044-419: The " writ of right". The defendant could insist on trial by "wager of battle", that is trial by combat , a judicially sanctioned duel . To avoid the plaintiff staking life and limb, a tale was told in the pleadings about how one John Doe leased land from the plaintiff but was ousted by Richard Roe, who claimed a contrary lease from the defendant . Such events would lead to the "mixed action in ejectment ",

2117-462: The Advisory Committee included George W. Pepper , Samuel Marion Driver , and Maynard Pirsig . The Advisory Committee first prepared two preliminary drafts for its own use, then eventually printed and circulated three drafts nationwide, in May 1936, April 1937, and November 1937. The third report was the final one, which the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed, revised, and adopted on December 20, 1937. There

2190-632: The Bill allowed it to take cases traditionally in the remit of other common law courts by claiming that the defendant had committed trespass in Middlesex. Once the defendant was in custody, the trespass complaint would be quietly dropped and other complaints (such as debt or detinue) would be substituted. In 1623, a rule was declared that Members of Parliament were given a trust to represent their constituencies and, therefore, were not at liberty to resign. However, an MP who accepted an "office of profit" from

2263-527: The Conformity Act of 1872, which directed federal courts to conform their procedure in such actions to the current practice in the states in which they were sitting (i.e., "dynamic conformity"). Federal courts were allowed to continue to develop the federal common law of evidence (most of which was replaced a century later by the Federal Rules of Evidence ). However, allowing federal courts to conform to current state procedure still did not solve

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2336-705: The Crown (including appointment as a minister) was obliged to leave the House and seek re-election, because it was thought their independence might be compromised if they were in the monarch's pay. The device was invented that the MP who wished to quit applied to the Crown for the post of " Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds " or " Steward of the Manor of Northstead " with no duties or income, but legally an office of profit in

2409-416: The FRCP and its state counterparts (this was also an express position of the federal civil procedure reform movement), is that civil procedure is a judicial function reserved to the judiciary under the rule of separation of powers ; legislatures are often too congested and gridlocked to make timely amendments to civil procedure statutes (as evidenced by the chaos and delays surrounding the statutory adoption of

2482-492: The FRCP for their civil procedure systems, while maintaining the general principle that the legislature should manage civil procedure. For example, the FRCP's liberal discovery rules heavily influenced the California Civil Discovery Act of 1957 as well as its subsequent replacements in 1986 and 2004. Thus, by fixing the most archaic and frustrating parts of their procedural systems, they have obviated

2555-470: The FRCP. The American legal landscape is strewn with procedural reform efforts. There have been innumerable revisions to the FRCP, and to the nation’s state procedural rules, in the eighty years since promulgation of the FRCP. The resulting procedural diversity has been both valued and vilified. Various critics have disavowed the efficacy of procedural reform efforts. They have identified inherent anti-uniformity factors that should be embraced. A consequence of

2628-410: The FRCP. For example, Rhode Island has its own Civil Court Rules of Procedure. Generally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrial discovery , heavy reliance on live testimony obtained at deposition or elicited in front of a jury , and aggressive pretrial "law and motion" practice designed to result in a pretrial disposition (that is, summary judgment ) or

2701-470: The Federal Rules of Evidence); and many legislators are nonlawyers who do not understand the urgent need to constantly revise and improve civil procedure rules. Thus, the development of state statutory civil procedure law is often haphazard and chaotic. Another reason for why many states have not adopted the FRCP is that they have borrowed, by occasional statutory acts, the most innovative parts of

2774-531: The King became a legal fiction in that the original debtor was not entitled to controvert this allegation in order to oust the Exchequer from jurisdiction. The Bill of Middlesex was a legal fiction used by the Court of King's Bench to gain jurisdiction over cases traditionally in the remit of the Court of Common Pleas . Hinging on the King's Bench's retaining criminal jurisdiction over the county of Middlesex ,

2847-534: The Supreme Court about revisions to procedural rules. The Judicial Conference then appointed a Standing Committee to handle that task, which in turn appointed an advisory committee for each set of federal procedural rules, including the FRCP. The initial members of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules were appointed in April 1960; since then, that committee has been in charge of drafting revisions to

2920-480: The Supreme Court never adopted the Committee's 1955 revisions, and discharged the Committee instead on October 1, 1956. The ABA and numerous other groups lobbied for some kind of committee to take over the task of maintaining the FRCP and other federal procedural rules. In 1958, Congress amended the act creating the Judicial Conference of the United States so that it would have the power to advise

2993-416: The United States consists of rules that govern civil actions in the federal , state , and territorial court systems, and is distinct from the rules that govern criminal actions . Like much of American law , civil procedure is not reserved to the federal government in its Constitution . As a result, each state is free to operate its own system of civil procedure independent of her sister states and

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3066-473: The ability of trial court judges in rural areas to trip up big city lawyers with obscure local rules and forms, and in turn improving the portability of legal services. Even states that declined to adopt the FRCP, like California, also joined the movement towards intrastate uniformity of civil procedure. One surviving legacy of the old Conformity Act is that the FRCP is still vague about certain procedural details. For example, Rules 7, 10, and 11 do not list all

3139-404: The above patchwork of historical imitations and amendments is the countless procedural differences between state and federal courts across the nation. Most practicing lawyers and judges are far too busy to focus on reforming the system where they have learned to function. There is precious little time to devote to individual consideration of whether another judicial system offers a better solution to

3212-409: The authority to order the recall of Parliament. Instead, the legal fiction was maintained that Parliament had never been prorogued; any references to prorogation were expunged from the record, and Parliament was instead recorded as being adjourned , enabling it to reassemble the next day. Some legal fictions have been invalidated due to increased historical knowledge and changes in social norms, as in

3285-436: The briefing and arguments of motions, and Rule 83 grants broad authority to district courts to promulgate local rules. This compromise allowed each federal district court to supplement the FRCP by promulgating local rules which track traditional motion practice in their states to the extent compatible with the FRCP. But it also defeated the FRCP's objective of procedural uniformity. While virtually all U.S. lawyers understand

3358-506: The centuries have imparted a degree of stability both to the institution of legal fictions and to specific legal fictions (such as adoptions and corporate personhood ) that have been repeatedly invoked in judicial precedents. While judiciaries retain discretion in the use of legal fictions, some general propositions regarding the appropriateness of using legal fictions might be expressed as follows: Some legal fictions are codified in statutory or regulatory law. A person having ordinary skill in

3431-415: The code pleading states. Some of the common law pleading states nominally retained the forms of action but declined to adopt code pleading because they had developed their own workarounds for the deficiencies of the common law. For example, Virginia developed its own unique system of "motion pleading", based on a "motion for judgment" which functions like a pleading. Field is also credited with developing

3504-569: The court must determine whether a standard has been reached, such as whether a defendant has been negligent , the court frequently uses the legal fiction of the " reasonable man ". This is known as the " objective test ", and is far more common than the "subjective test" where the court seeks the viewpoint of the parties (or "subjects"). Sometimes, the court may apply a "mixed test", as in the House of Lords' decision in DPP v Camplin 1978. In England ,

3577-413: The days of chivalry , but fitted up for a modern inhabitant. The moated ramparts , the embattled towers, and the trophied halls, are magnificent and venerable, but useless. The interior apartments, now converted into rooms of convenience, are cheerful and commodious, though their approaches are winding and difficult. Henry Maine , on the other hand, argued that legal fictions seem an ornate outgrowth of

3650-410: The documents that should be filed with a motion, nor do they contain a complete set of requirements for how they should be formatted, Rule 6 does not contain a complete motion briefing schedule (apart from the general requirement that a notice of motion and supporting motion papers must be filed and served at least 14 days ahead of the hearing), Rule 78 grants district courts broad discretion in scheduling

3723-432: The early 20th-century reformers was to use the development of new federal procedural rules to facilitate uniformity of civil procedure in the separate states. By 1959, 17 states had adopted versions of the FRCP in part or whole as their civil procedure systems. Today, 35 states have adopted versions of the FRCP to govern civil procedure in their state court systems, although significant modifications were necessary because

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3796-494: The end, most but not all federal district courts restructured their local rules to follow a uniform format promulgated by the Judicial Conference of the United States, but they continued to maintain most of their unique local idiosyncrasies. California , Illinois and New York are notable in that almost all of their sui generis civil procedure systems are codified in statutory law, not in rules promulgated by

3869-766: The father's will determining Peter's legal guardian . Later in the novel a witness to the accident declares seeing the mother floundering some time after the father has disappeared, and so the legal fiction is overturned and the mother's will is followed, providing Peter with a new legal guardian. Wells was in error as to the English law, which actually presumes that the older person died first. In Act II, Scene 1 of Gilbert and Sullivan 's The Gondoliers , Giuseppe Palmieri (who serves jointly with his brother Marco as King of Barataria) requests that he and his brother be recognized individually, that they might receive individual portions of food as they have two independent appetites. He

3942-451: The federal court system. Early federal and state civil procedure in the United States was rather ad hoc and was based on traditional common law procedure but with much local variety. There were varying rules that governed different types of civil cases such as "actions" at law or "suits" in equity or in admiralty; these differences grew from the history of "law" and "equity" as separate court systems in English law. Even worse, discovery

4015-451: The federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, while state courts have general jurisdiction over innumerable types of matters that are usually beyond the jurisdiction of federal courts (traffic, family, probate, and so on). In supplementing the FRCP to provide a comprehensive set of rules appropriate to state law, several states took advantage of the opportunity to impose intrastate uniformity of civil procedure, thereby cutting down on

4088-474: The federal courts to write their own procedural rules for everything but actions at law. In the context of actions at law, the earlier Process Act of 1789 was so poorly written that it forced a federal court sitting in a state to apply the common law rules of pleading and procedure that were in effect in the state at the time it joined the Union, regardless of whether the state had modified or revised its civil procedure system since. In other words, even though

4161-433: The federal courts' problems with actions at law, because by the turn of the 20th century, the U.S. was a mix of common law and code pleading states. Even worse, many code pleading states had merged common law and equity procedure into a unified civil procedure system, which directly clashed with the federal courts' preservation of the traditional English division between the two bodies of procedural law. The inevitable result

4234-426: The general principles of a FRCP 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss or a FRCP 56 motion for summary judgment, the actual details of making and opposing motions continue to vary dramatically from one federal district court to the next. Variations include things like the formatting of court papers (including typeface, margins, line spacing, line numbers, and whether maximum length should be calculated in words or pages), whether

4307-462: The last situation, out-of-town attorneys and pro se parties are at a severe disadvantage unless the district court's uncodified customs have been expressly documented in legal treatises, which is not always the case for smaller states. Congress and the federal courts have recognized that this flaw in the FRCP drives up the cost of legal services and hinders the ability of lawyers to litigate in federal courts in other states, which in turn has become

4380-445: The law that ought to be removed by legislation . Jeremy Bentham sharply criticised the notion of legal fictions, saying that "fictions are to law what fraud is to trade." In the novel Joan and Peter (1918) by H. G. Wells , Peter's parents die in a sailing accident. As it is not known which parent dies first, a legal fiction is applied maintaining that the husband, being a man and therefore stronger, lived longer which results in

4453-440: The law to regulate it; and declaring members of the country's Senate "dead in the eyes of the law" in order to remove them from office, since the senators serve for life. Legal fictions derive their legitimacy from tradition and precedent, rather than formal standing as a source of law. Historically, many legal fictions were created as ad hoc remedies forged to meet a harsh or an unforeseen situation. Conventions and practices over

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4526-451: The minority of U.S. states whose enacting clauses and criminal prosecutions are done in the name of the people, rather than the state.) The other problem with having judges manage civil procedure rules is that they are usually too busy with their regular caseloads to directly draft new or amended rules themselves. As noted above, most of the real work is delegated to appointed advisory committees. The opposite viewpoint, as represented by

4599-565: The monarch's gift. The first MP to avail themself of the Chiltern Hundreds to leave Parliament was John Pitt in 1751. The requirement for ministerial re-election has been abolished, but the "Chiltern Hundreds" mechanism remains to enable MPs to resign. The 2019 UK prorogation controversy was resolved through the use of legal fiction. Although the United Kingdom Supreme Court found that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's prorogation of parliament had been unlawful, it lacked

4672-431: The need for complete reform, which would also necessitate retraining all their lawyers and judges. Confusingly, Kansas and North Carolina have "Rules of Civil Procedure" which are actually enacted statutes, not rules promulgated by their state supreme courts. A few states have adopted the general principle that civil procedure should be established in court rules, not civil procedure statutes, but have refused to adopt

4745-628: The new powers granted to the Court by the Act. Then in January 1935, Charles Edward Clark , the dean of Yale Law School , published an article arguing that federal procedural reform had to include a full merger of law and equity, as had occurred in many code pleading states. This article in turn inspired U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell to write a letter to Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in favor of procedural reform. The Supreme Court appointed an Advisory Committee to draft what would become

4818-517: The practice at hand. On their behalf, there are numerous state and federal entities–perhaps no more so than in California–that propose intra-system or single-subject changes from time to time. But there is no ‘‘go to’’ institution with the resources to routinely canvass differences between state and federal procedure within each state. There is no evolving national database that tracks this genre of state and federal variances. An express objective of

4891-642: The very idea of "civil procedure" in American English , as referring to a single body of law governing the entire lifecycle of a civil action. Before him, an earlier generation of American lawyers like Joseph Story had always conceived of "pleading" and "practice" as two separate but related bodies of procedural law. By the late 19th century, lawyers were becoming very frustrated with having to follow procedures that had been obsolete in their states for decades every time they litigated actions at law in federal courts. In response, Congress finally enacted

4964-489: The whole process of suits in equity Sets of rules were promulgated in 1822, 1842 (amended in 1850, 1854, 1861, 1864, 1869, 1871, 1875, 1879, 1882, 1890, 1892, 1893 and 1894), and in 1912 (amended in 1924, 1930 and 1932). The 1912 Rules were superseded in 1938 by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which were largely based on the 1912 Rules. Civil procedure in the United States Civil procedure in

5037-545: Was confusion and chaos in the federal courts, particularly as interstate commerce escalated with the Second Industrial Revolution and an increasing number of cases between citizens of different states were heard in federal courts under diversity jurisdiction . The glaring deficiencies in the Conformity Act, especially the assumption that a federal court would always sit in a U.S. state, caused severe problems in extraterritorial federal courts such as

5110-492: Was expected to allege the casual loss and finding of, say, a thousand tons of pig-iron ". In contrast, code pleading was supposed to be carefully designed, at least in theory, with the entire lifecycle of a case in mind so that it would be simple, elegant, and logical, and was implemented by the enacting of a "code of civil procedure" by the state legislature. At common law, procedure came first and substance came second; code pleading flipped those priorities around and focused on

5183-411: Was generally unavailable in actions at law. In order to obtain discovery, a party to a legal action had to bring a collateral proceeding, a bill in equity in aid of discovery, just to obtain essential documents or testimony from the opposing party. Procedure in the early federal courts was notoriously incoherent, and such incoherence persisted for almost 150 years. The Process Act of 1792 authorized

5256-675: Was significant opposition to the new rules in Congress and hearings were held by both House and Senate committees, but the Rules Enabling Act required Congress to affirmatively override the Supreme Court's adoption of rules pursuant to the Act. Congress recessed in June 1938 with neither house having taken a floor vote on the issue, and accordingly, the FRCP automatically went into effect on September 16, 1938. The Rules unified law and equity and replaced common law and code pleading with

5329-431: Was truly at issue between the parties. For example, the traditional form of action for trover was originally intended for finders, keepers situations (i.e., the plaintiff accidentally lost some property, then the defendant found it and wrongfully kept it), but was gradually expanded to many other kinds of improper takings of others' property—which are now known as conversion . Thus, in an action for trover, "a plaintiff

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