Conversion legal definition of conversion
Conversion legal definition of conversion : "conversion" Conversion Any unauthorized act that deprives an owner of personal property without his or her consent. The wrongdoer converts the goods to his or her own use and excludes the owner from use and enjoyment of them. The English Common Law early recognized such an act as wrongful and, by the middle of the fifteenth century, allowed an action in Trover to compensate the aggrieved owner. The earliest cases allowing a lawsuit for conversion were based on claims that the plaintiff had possession of certain items of Personal Property , then casually lost them, and the defendant had found them and had not returned them but instead "converted them to his own use." This phrase was picked up, and it gave a name to a tort that origina