Personal Property Notes

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Personal Property exam notes: Week 1: property has two distinguishing qualities, it is a assignable or transferable right where property is regarded as assets which views them as a contractual right, it is enforceable. Property must have a corpus and occupy space.  Rights in personam are in principle demandable only from the person against whom they originally arose or someone representing them. Law relating to this is better known as law of obligation  Rights in rem are in principle demandable wherever the thing is found hence against anyone who has it or is interfering with it.  To put it at its simplest, property law is about the legally recognised relationships we have with each other in respect of things.  In respect of personalty the Personal Property Securities Act 1999 states in s4 that personal property “includes chattels paper, documents of title, goods, intangibles, investment documents, money and negotiable instruments.” Section 119 of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 defines goods to include “(i) all kinds of movable personal property, including animals; and (ii) emblements, growing crops, and things attached to, or forming part of, the land that are agreed to be severed before sale or under the contract of sale; and (iii) computer software; but (b) does not include money or things in action.” For the purposes of the Crimes Act 1961, under s2 “property includes real and personal property, and any estate or interest in any real or personal property, money, electricity, and any debt, and any thing in action, and any other right or interest”.  Moore v Regents of the University of California the issue was whether Moore has any cause of action against the doctor. It was decided that he had, but the majority held that he had only a personal action for breach of the doctor’s disclosure obligations. The issue that divided the majority from the minority was therefore whether Moore could be said to have property rights in the cells which had been removed from his body. A person cannot be said to have “property” or “ownership” in his own body cells once they have been excised from his body.  Oxford v Moss - University of Liverpool, Student dishonestly took exam paper. Alleged the student stole the information on the paper, not the paper. Property in confidential information in an exam paper(?). Not theft because he intended to return it. This is because the definition of “intangible property” under the Theft Act (UK) did not include confidential information.  Doodeward v Spence (1908): d Ratio: (High Court of Australia) The police seized from an exhibitor the body of a two headed still born baby which had been preserved in a bottle. Held: An order was made for its return: ‘If, then, there can, under some circumstances, be a continued rightful possession of a human body unburied, I think, as I have already said, that the law will protect that rightful possession by appropriate remedies. I do not know of any definition of property which is not wide enough to include such a right of permanent possession. By whatever name the right is called, I think it exists, and that, so far as it constitutes property, a human body, or a

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