" NOT NEGOTIABLE."
Where your thief has passed the cheque on to a bona fide transferee who acquires a good title, the cheque in this case having been drawn payable to " bearer," or having become so payable by the endorsement in blank of the payee (meaning that it must have been stolen after reaching the payee), you could have covered yourself against the possibility of anyone's acquiring a perfect title by crossing the cheque " not negotiable," which words, though not affecting the position of the banker, prevent any transferee from being able in any circum- stances to place himself before you, so as to deprive you or your payee of the right to the cheque. These words do not restrict the transfer of the cheque, but merely issue a warning to anyone who takes a cheque bearing them. Yet they convey nothing if written across a cheque which is not crossed. Briefly, conversion is the wrongful intermeddling, innocent or deliberate, with somebody else's property without the owner's consent. . _ An action for conversion in such circumstances might easily be an expensive ..business and not necessarily suc-
cessful, and one has, therefore, to look further for a means of avoiding the difficulty. This means is partly to be found in another addition to the cheque, in the form of the words " Account, Payee," " % payee," or " % payee
- This places' on the banker who collects the cheque the onus of collecting only for the payee you have designated. It is an anomaly—your possession of the right to require a banker whom probably you do not know, and who ordinarily owes you no duty, to collect the cheque for no other than your payee. Yet such is the raw, and, if it is not followed, you again have the right to bring an action for conversion, and one, moreover, carrying little doubt as to the outcome.
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