and mistakenly delivers the chattel to the wrong person or refuses to deliver it to the right person, he can be sued for conversion. Every person is guilty of a conversion, who without lawful justification deprives a person of his goods by delivering them to some one else so as to change the possession. The cause of action in conversion is based on an unequivocal act of ownership by the defendant over goods of the plaintiff without any authority or right in that behalf. The act must be an unequivocal act of ownership, i.e., an act such as acquiring, dealing with, or disposing of the goods, which is consistent only with the rights of an owner as distinct from the equivocal acts of one who is entrusted with the custody or handling or carriage of goods. A demand and refusal is not, therefore, itself a conversion, but it may be evidence of a prior conversion. The cause of action in wrongful detention of property is based on a wrongful withholding of the plaintiff's goods. If such a defendant, without any right so to do, withholds the goods from the plaintiff after the plaintiff has demanded their return, he is, for such time as he so withholds them, guilty of wrongful detention. This is the tort of which a bailee or finder is
