Good Faith Acquisition of Movables

Abstract

This paper discusses the position of the bona fide acquirer: the person who acquires a movable from someone he erroneously considers to be entitled to transfer ownership to him. The reason for this lack of title on the part of the transferor may be that he had previously stolen or embezzled the property, that he had acquired it under reservation of title, or that he was declared bankrupt, etcetera.

The extent of the protection of the good faith acquirer in case of unauthorized transfer differs from country to country, and this divergence makes our topic a particularly complicated subject for harmonization. This chapter consists of two parts: in Part A, the rules on good faith acquisition in English, French and German law are described and compared. Part B focuses on the issue of harmonization: after a discussion of the preferred method of establishing rules on unauthorized transfer for Europe, the attention is devoted in particular to the benefit of analyzing the problem from the perspective of Law & Economics.