belongs to the surviving relatives. The husband or wife and, in the case of other persons, the next of kin, has the right to select the place of interment and also to erect a monument."

§ 17. Miscellaneous. Vegetables and trees when severed from the ground, and fruit when severed from the trees, minerals and metals after dug out, soil excavated to be used elsewhere, ice cut away, and oil and gas which have escaped from the earth, are changed from real property or land into corporeal chattels personal; and fruit, vegetables, trees, and other products may sometimes become such by mere constructive severance. There are many other chattels personal of an inanimate corporeal character, among which may be enumerated household furniture, implements, utensils, garments, plate, jewelry, wares, merchandise, carriages, rolling stock of railways (but not the road bed), and all other personal chattels that can be seen and touched but are not alive."

§ 18. Debts and Other Claims for Money. Debts are incorporeal chattels personal. The objects of ownership in such cases are invisible, although they may be evidenced by writing, or other visible representatives. They are movables as much as corporeal chattels are. They accompany the creditor wherever he goes. The right here is to some positive act on the part of the debtor with respect to some contract or other obligation as the incorporeal chattel. Technically a debt is a fixed and specific amount of money due by virtue of some agreement, but popularly the word is used to denote any claim for money. Many debts and claims for money are also created by pure implication of law, when they are known as quasi-contracts. Torts and breaches of contracts also give rise to remedial rights to damages, and they will be treated in this connection. Consequently we have the following classes of claims for money: (1) debts of record; (2) specialty debts; (3) sim

• Chapple v. Cooper, 13 M. & W. 252; Meager v. Driscoll, 99 Mass. 281.

7 Yale v. Seeley, 15 Vt. 221; Hart v. Benton Bellefontaine R. Co., Mo. App. 446.

ple contracts debts; (4) quasi-contracts; (5) remedial obligations to pay damages. A person may have only a qualified property in some of these as we shall learn later. The debts may be secured or unsecured. But if the security be only accessory to the debts they remain movables, although the indebtedness be secured by land or other immovable property. The name usually applied to secured debts is the name of the security alone, but the object of the property in fact consists of that incorporeal thing called a debt. There are three kinds of security: (1) a simple lien; (2) a pledge; and (3) a mortgage passing the property out and out.8

§ 19. Debts of Record. Debts of record are generally classed as quasi-contracts, but they rank higher than other quasi-contracts and the proper action to institute thereon is debt, whereas the proper action on other quasi-contracts is generally some form of general assumpsit, where the common-law procedure still prevails. A debt of record is one due and evidenced by a judgment of a court of record; which is a judicial, organized tribunal, possessing attributes and exercising functions independently of the person of the magistrate designated generally to hold court. Judgments may be interlocutory, where the amount of the damages is not ascertained, or final, where it is ascertained. A decree in equity is treated like a judgment debt at law, if it is for the payment of money. The judgments of other courts, not courts of record, do not have the priority of debts of record, but of course they are incorporeal chattels personal. Debts of record are also constituted by recognizances, or obligations entered into before courts of record or magistrates authorized. Debts of record, in the absence of statute, take priority of all other debts."

§ 20. Specialties. Specialty debts are debts evidenced by contracts under seal, as bonds, covenants, etc. They are another kind of incorporeal chattels personal. They are not corporeal chattels, for the visible evidence is not the

8 Cable v. McCune, 26 Mo. 371; Halliday v. Holgate, L. R. 3 Ex. 299. 9 Ex parte Gladhill, 8 Met. (Mass.), 168, 170.

real object of ownership. There is no true object of ownership. The right to the positive conduct of another is without physical object. So this mere right is seized hold of by the law and designated as an incorporeal chattel. A specialty may be in the form of a deed containing a covenant, or in the form of a bond, which is a sealed obligation to pay money, either absolutely or conditionally, and it includes individual bonds, railway bonds, and city, State, and United States bonds. Arrears of rent, between landlord and tenant, are entitled to the rank of specialties. Debts by mortgage are usually ranked as specialties by reason of the covenant therein. Specialties rank next after debts of record.10

§ 21. Simple Contract Debts. All debts not under seal, whether verbal or written, are called simple contract debts. They include not only informal oral and written promises to pay money, but bills, notes, checks, insurance policies and annuities.11 They stand lowest on the list of priority, although irrespective of the nature of the debt our government has priority over private citizens. These are all incorporeal chattels, for though the paper on which the obligation is written is corporeal, the paper is not the object of the right, and there is no object other than the contract itself. A bank deposit is a simple debt if the ordinary general deposit; but if a special deposit, that is, if the identical package is to be returned, there is no debt, but there is a right to positive acts with reference to corporeal chattels.

§ 22. Quasi-Contracts. A quasi-contract is a legal obligation created by pure implication of law, and enforced by an action ex-contractu. In such case the one for whose benefit the law creates the obligation has the right to a positive act, the payment of money, with reference to this obligation. This obligation is an object of ownership. It

10 Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet. 410.

11 Bills, notes, insurance, liens, pledges, mortgages, etc., receive separate treatment as special topics in this library and hence are merely referred to in this connection.

is an incorporeal chattel personal, like a contract, because there is no corporeal chattel even to evidence the incorporeal, there is no object other than the obligation itself, but it is no less a form of ownership. There are many quasi-contracts. We have already considered debts of record. In addition there are customary obligations, including contribution among sureties and general average as applied to maritime losses, statutory obligations, and equitable obli. gations, which latter include all the obligations to pay for benefits received which in equity and good conscience belong to another, as where obtained by fraud, or appropriation, or compulsion, or mistaken reliance of some sort.12 A pays $1,000 to B for stock which B refuses to deliver according to contract. A may sue B and recover the $1,000. B's obligation to repay the $1,000 is a quasi-contract.

12

§ 23. Remedial Obligations. Every legal wrong which violates any of the forms of property heretofore considered, that is any breach of legal duty of forbearance with respect to corporeal chattels, or any breach of obligation of performance with respect to incorporeal chattels, creates a new kind of property, a remedial legal right. As an example of the first: A injures B's horse so that A cannot use it for six months. As an example of the second: A refuses to accept and pay for certain cattle belonging to B which he has promised to buy.

A remedial legal right is a right in personam to have by State authority the prevention or redress of an injury caused by a violation of an antecedent legal right. In some of these remedial legal rights one may have an absolute property right, so that he may not only possess and enjoy the same, but may dispose thereof; in others he may have only a qualified property, because of the lack of the right of disposal. In the early common law only a qualified property right could exist therein, because the rights could not be sold nor transferred for fear that such transfer would breed litigation; but inch by inch this property right has grown until today an absolute property may be had 12 Willis on Contracts 4, 8-39.

in most of the objects of ownership that fall under the above category. This is true of breaches of contracts, torts affecting the estate of a person, wrongs to the person resulting in the death of that person, and in other personal torts after judgment; but before judgment a person can have only a qualified property against a wrongdoer as respects a tort not affecting the estate but the person and not causing death.13 Only a qualified property can be had in preventive and restorative remedies.

The objects of ownership in the case of remedial legal rights vary with the legal wrongs. The act to which the owner is entitled is generally the same, payment of money, but the object to which it relates may be breach of principal contract affecting person, or property, or accessory contract, or quasi-contract, or the torts of trespass, conversion, death, detention of property, escape of dangerous things, fraud, infringement of patent, etc., removal of lateral support, mutilation of dead body, negligence, nuisance, procuring refusal or breach of contract, or other tort affecting property, or torts affecting personal rights like assault and battery, negligence, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, slander and libel, etc. But, whatever the object, it is an incorporeal chattel personal.

§ 24. Lien. A lien is that hold or claim which one person has upon the property of another as security for some debt or demand due him. It may relate to corporeal chattels in that the lien claimant may keep the same in his possession, as in the case of a cobbler who has mended a pair of shoes.

§ 25. Pledge. A pledge is a bailment of property as security for some debt or engagement. From debts secured by lien we have now advanced a step. Either corporeal chattels or incorporeal chattels evidenced by writing may be pledged, but the pledge itself, like the lien, is an incorporeal chattel because it is merely accessory to a debt. For example: A borrows $100 of B and gives B his promissory note therefor and delivers as collateral security for this 13 Hammons v. G. N. P. R. Co., 53 Minn. 249.