Conversion a peculiartort,1 boasts an equally idiosyncratic measure of damages. Other torts—and this includes torts involving interference with property, such as trespass or negligence—are about compensation: at least in principle, the plaintiff recovers, and recovers only, his loss 2 and even this he only gets subject to the principles of mitigation of damage and (normally) contributory negligence. Conversion, by contrast, seems to break all these rules. The claimant generally recovers not his loss 3 but the worth of the thing converted, 4 losing in the process, by virtue of a rather clumsy balancing rule, any inter rest he may have had in it. 5 Contributory negligence is disregarded, even in the case of claims for special damage (indeed, this is confirmed by stature 6); there is no general requirement of mitigation of loss; and even the normal rules of causation are substantially modified, 7 in that—at least in some cases—there is apparently no requirement that the plaintiff show a causal connection between the defendant's act of conversion and any loss suffered by him.