Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:07

From: Sarah Green

Subject: Interference with property

If it is indeed a private law matter, then I would say that it would amount to a conversion.  A defendant need not (at any point) have actual possession of the asset in question to be liable in conversion, and there have been instances in which liability has been found on the basis of preventing a rightful possessor from exercising her full spectrum of proprietary rights over her asset, without there having been an unlawful active dispossession in the first place:  Howard E Perry v BRB [1980] 1 WLR 1375, Oakley v Lyster [1931] 1 KB 148 being two of the most immediate examples that spring to mind.

(Martin, would spuilzie lie even though there was no "violent" taking of possession from the claimants? I have long been unclear about the effect of Brown v Hudelstone (1625) Mor. 11748 on this in a modern context.)

SG

________________________________
From: Andrew Tettenborn  
Sent: Tue 18/11/2008 16:16
To: Andrew Botterell
Cc: Tettenborn, A 
Subject: Re: interference with property

Dear Andrew,

As I might have expected, an incisive answer. Interestingly enough, at least one case says there's no tort in the football scenario – see British Economical Lamp Co. v. Empire, Mile End (1913) 29 T.L.R. 386 (yes, I've got your property on my land, no you can't come and get it, I don't know if you can ever come, and yes, I'm feeling bloody-minded). And as I see it the difficulty is that you are preventing me exercising some of my rights in the football but by no means all of them: and it's quite clear that interfering with some rights only may well not be a conversion (e.g. the Mersey Ferry case, Fouldes v Willoughby (1841) 8 M & W 540). Come to think of it, would you say that if terrorists blow up the only entrance to a harbour they are guilty of converting every vessel in it that would have liked to get out but now can't?

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