Son of a Sleeper Spy by E.J. Law

Author:E.J. Law [Law, E.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Law Thrillers, LLC
Published: 2018-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

Robbery is theft of property from a person by force or threat of force.

As Marcus wove his way to Greg to hand him back his phone, he said, “But don’t take someone’s property by stealth if you’re in D.C.!”

I smiled as Maeve and Greg both sat down.

Marcus returned to the front of the class. “Now, moving on . . . I know that you’re all thinking about the Tort that Greg could use to sue me civilly, right?”

He looked out among the several blank faces and smiled.

“Conversion? Or is it trespass to chattels? I always get them mixed up.”

I glanced around the room. A few students seemed anxious to respond and others lowered their gaze, but nobody blurted out which one was the better choice.

“There aren’t any statutes that define ‘conversion,’ ” Marcus said, “because state codes generally don’t address Torts. This is where we’ll analyze case law. It’ll be like writing our own restatements of the law.

“Let’s start with the laws of a few states. When someone finds a good paragraph on the Tort of conversion, please stand up.”

A student stood up and began reading what they found: “. . . the gist of a conversion is not the acquisition of the property by the wrongdoer, but the wrongful deprivation of . . . property. Nor need there exist a forcible dispossession of property to constitute . . . a conversion.”[mm]

“That’s good. So, it’s like robbery without the ‘force or threat of force’ requirement . . . which is just theft, right? But why not just call it the Tort of theft? We have a Tort of assault, just like the crime. There has to be something else to it.”

He paused to give the class a moment to mull this over, then said, “How about D.C.? Listen to this—” Marcus cleared his throat, reading from his notes. “The essence of conversion is an interference with another’s property that is so substantial as to justify treatment as a forced sale of the property.[nn]

“Let’s move on to trespass to chattels and then I think we can simplify this.”

A few moments passed and a student stood to read her clip. “This is from Pennsylvania: ‘A trespass to a chattel may be committed by intentionally: a, dispossessing another of the chattel, or b, using or intermeddling with a chattel in the possession of another.’ ”[oo]

Another student read one aloud from California.[pp]

“Excellent,” Marcus said. “I tend to think the ‘deprivation’ language more clearly defines conversion. You may think I’m oversimplifying this, but I’m sending you now a synthesis of my black-letter law on conversion and trespass to chattels, which says: ‘Conversion is a substantial interference with another person’s property that amounts to a deprivation of that property. Trespass to chattels is the interference with another person’s property.’

“As a side note, with trespass to chattels, the damages will be nominal if there isn’t damage to the property.[qq]

“There are a variety of ways to write a statement of law. Your job is to learn what the

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