In 2003, Gerard McMeel wrote a thought-provoking article. It was entitled, "The Redundancy of Bailment". His thesis was that the concept of bailment did not really contribute to the intelligibility, or rationality, of English personal property law. Among other things, the label of "bailment" sometimes acted as an unnecessary straitjacket. It also downplayed the deliberate contractual structuring of relationships between commercial parties. Indeed, bailment had no autonomous legal content which could not be better attributed to concepts of consent, wrongdoing, unjust enrichment or property. Thus, he stated: "Bailment does not give any extra analytical dimension which we do not have by reference to generic legal concepts such as consent, wrongdoing, unjust enrichment, fiduciary obligation and property. It does not shed any further illumination on our problems."
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