Nemo dat and theft:the need for clarity of the impact of the criminal status of rogue middlemen in title conflicts

The basic rule concerning title in English and Welsh law is nemo dat quod non habet: you cannot give what you have not got. The rule causes title conflicts, such as: the original owner hands over their goods to a middleman who disposes them without the original owner’s authority or consent to an innocent purchaser. The middleman either disappears or is not worth suing, meaning the dispute is (almost) invariably between the original owner and the innocent purchaser. Given that stolen goods cannot have their title laundered by a nemo dat exception, the delineation between stolen and non-stolen goods is a key issue but it remains unclear, exacerbated by developments in criminal law over the past twenty years. At the core of this problematization is a question of justice as to innocent purchasers, whose position turns on factors outside their knowledge and control.