BAILMENT - A legal relationship
created when a person gives property to someone else
for safekeeping. To create a bailment the other party
must knowingly have exclusive control over the property.
The receiver must use reasonable care to protect the
property.
This word is derived from the French, bailler, to
deliver. It is a compendious expression, to signify
a contract resulting from delivery. It has been defined
to be a delivery of goods on a condition, express
or implied, that they shall be restored by the bailee
to the bailor, or according to his directions, as
soon as the purposes for which they are bailed shall
be answered. Or it is a delivery of goods in trust,
on a contract either expressed or implied, that the
trust shall be duly executed, and the goods redelivered,
as soon as the time or use for which they were bailed
shall have elapsed or be performed.
Each of these definitions, says Judge Story, seems
redundant and inaccurate if it be the proper office
of a definition to include those things only which
belong to the genus or class. Both these definitions
suppose that the goods are to be restored or redelivered;
but in a bailment for sale, as upon a consignment
to a factor, no redelivery is contemplated between
the parties. In some cases, no use is contemplated
by the bailee, in others, it is of the essence of
the contract: in some cases time is material to terminAte
the contract; in others, time is necessary to give
a new accessorial right.
Mr. Justice Blackstone has defined a bailment to
be a delivery of goods in trust, upon contract, either
expressed or implied, that the trust shall be faithfully
executed on the part of the bailee. And in another
place, as the delivery of goods to another person
for a particular use.
Mr. Justice Story says, that a bailment is a delivery
of a thing in trust for some special object or purpose,
and upon a contract, express or implied, to conform
to the object or purpose of the trust.
Bailments are divisible into three kinds: 1. Those
in which the trust is for the benefit of the bailor,
as deposits and mandates. 2. Those in which the trust
is for the benefit of the bailee, as gratuitous loans
for use. 3. Those in which the trust is for the benefit
of both parties, as pledges or pawns, and hiring and
letting to hire.
Some have divided bailments into five sorts, namely:
1. Depositum, or deposit. 2. Mandatum, or commission
without recompense. 3. Commodatum, or loan for use,
without pay. 4. Pignori acceptum, or pawn. 5. Locatum,
or hiring, which is always with reward. This last
is subdivided into, 1. Locatio rei, or biring, by
which the hirer gains a temporary use of the thing.
2. Locatio operis faciendi, when something is to be
done to the thing delivered. 3. Locatio operis mercium
vehendarum, when the thing is merely to be carried
from one place to another.
