How Is a Legal Relationship Created?

A legal relationship created when a person gives property to someone else for safekeeping. To
create a bailment the other party must knowingly have exclusive control over the property. The
receiver must use reasonable care to protect the property.

This word is derived from the French, bailler, to deliver. It is a compendious expression, to signify a
contract resulting from delivery. It has been defined to be a delivery of goods on a condition,
express or implied, that they shall be restored by the bailee to the bailor, or according to his
directions, as soon as the purposes for which they are bailed shall be answered. Or it is a delivery
of goods in trust, on a contract either expressed or implied, that the trust shall be duly executed,
and the goods redelivered, as soon as the time or use for which they were bailed shall have
elapsed or be performed.

Three Kinds of Bailments

Bailments are divisible into three kinds:

1. Those in which the trust is for the benefit of the bailor, as deposits and mandates.
2. Those in which the trust is for the benefit of the bailee, as gratuitous loans for use.
3. Those in which the trust is for the benefit of both parties, as pledges or pawns, and hiring and
letting to hire.

Five Sorts of Bailments

Some have divided bailments into five sorts, namely:

1. Depositum, or deposit.
2. Mandatum, or commission without recompense.
3. Commodatum, or loan for use, without pay.
4. Pignori acceptum, or pawn.
5. Locatum, or hiring, which is always with reward.

This last is subdivided into,

1. Locatio rei, or biring, by which the hirer gains a temporary use of the thing.
2. Locatio operis faciendi, when something is to be done to the thing delivered.
3. Locatio operis mercium vehendarum, when the thing is merely to be carried from one place to
another.