ABSTRACT
Sometimes, a seller obtains possession of goods which he does not own and which he has no right to sell, but which, nevertheless, he sells to a third party. In very many such cases, the third party who buys the goods is innocent, in the sense that he buys them in good faith, unaware of the fact that the seller did not have the right to sell the goods. The non-owner, on the other hand, is almost always a wrongdoer. Often, he has committed theft in order to obtain possession of the goods. Sometimes, he has obtained possession of the goods lawfully, with the consent of the owner, but then commits theft by wrongfully selling the goods. Occasionally, he may not have offended against the criminal law at all but, in selling the goods, is guilty of a breaching a contract which he has made with the true owner. (These examples do not claim to be exhaustive but, nevertheless, the vast majority of sales by non-owners will come within them.) In all of these cases, the law must decide who owns the goods: is it the original owner or is it the third party who has bought them from the wrongdoer?
