Commercial Law Commons^™

The American Mutuum, Jerome C. Knowlton

Articles

The delivery of goods that may be accurately designated by number, weight or measure, such as corn or wine, on an undertaking that goods of like kind and quality shall be returned, creates what is known in the civil law as the contract of mutuum, a kind of bailment contract. Text writers on the common law regard such a transaction as a sale and not a bailment. "Where there is no obligation to return the specific article, and the receiver is at liberty to return another thing of equal value, he becomes debtor to make the return, and the title …