This book, for the first time, sets out in comprehensive and accessible fashion the law on acquiring, surrendering and transferring ownership rights in goods and chattels. These are issues that have the potential to present themselves in contentious and non-contentious matters of various kinds, for example in the contexts of testamentary and lifetime gifts and the law of mixtures, finding and bailment. It will therefore be of interest to a broad range of practitioners, as well as academics with an interest in property.

1. What is a Chattel and When Does it Become Capable of Ownership?
The Development of Goods and Chattels as Legal Concepts
Differentiating Chattels from Other Types of Property
Ownership of Chattels
Mixtures and Combinations
2. Obtaining and Keeping Title to Property that is Bona Vacantia
Animals
Plants, Natural Features and Things on Land
Human Tissue
Wreck, Salvage and Treasure
Bona Vacantia in the Narrow Sense – Special Circumstances in which Ownership Reverts to the Crown
3. Obtaining Title to a Chattel from a Third Party
Sale
Gifts
Failed Gifts
Conditional Gifts
Rejecting a Gift
Failure of Transfer of Goods Obtained by Fraud
Equitable Interests in Personalty
Security Over Personalty
Future Goods 7
Money 8
4. Giving Up Rights in Chattels and Acquiring Chattels that have been Surrendered
Abandonment
Bona Vacantia
Bailment Created when Possession has been Abandoned
5. Protecting the Rights of Owners and Possessors of Chattels
The Historical Context
Statutory Developments Since the 1970s
The Major Modern Rights Available to Protect Interests in Goods
Trespass to Goods and Conversion