Angeles, School of Law. For their comments I would like to thank the editor of this volume, Jennifer Arlen, as well as six anonymous reviewers.The plaintiff was standing on a platform of the defendant's railroad station after buying a ticket to go to Rockaway Beach. A train stopped, bound for another place. Two men ran forward to catch the train after it had started moving. One reached the platform of the car without mishap. The other, carrying a small package, jumped aboard the car, but seemed unsteady as if about to fall. A guard on the car reached forward to help him in, and another guard on the station platform pushed him from behind, dislodging the package, which fell upon the rails. The package, covered by newspaper, turned out to contain fireworks, which exploded when the package fell. The explosion knocked down some scales at the other end of the platform, many feet away. The scales struck the plaintiff, causing the injuries for which she sued. The Court of Appeals of New York, in a famous majority decision by Justice Benjamin Cardozo, held that the plaintiff could not recover because the accident was not "reasonably foreseeable" to the defendant. 1 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928).

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Defi nition, history and types A title system is a legal institution by which written evidence on the legal status of assets is systematically recorded. The written evidence mostly concerns acts of conveyances, providing data on the transfer of the asset, or on the vesting of partial rights, various interests or security rights on the asset. Their most prominent aim is to facilitate market circulation of assets by providing to potential buyers certainty about the legal status of the traded good. Often title systems serve also fi scal aims as they provide tax collectors with information on the wealth of taxpayers. The legal consequences of recordation can vary. Sometimes recordation is limited to the passive collection of conveyances and merely consists of a systematisation of already existing written evidence. Sometimes recordation has a deeper legal impact as the recordation implies also a procedure of checking the validity of written evidence and the rights and interests mentioned in it. In this case invalid rights and interests are purged from the asset (see further 4. Registration or recording system). In modern nation states title systems are most often organized by the government. They are a vital part of civil administration. As shown further, this was not always the case. Also nowadays recordation of rights and interests is often provided through private initiative. Major examples here are the registers of the title insurance companies in the USA and the Art Loss Register set up by major business from both the insurance and art industries. As soon as trade expanded across the boundaries of small and informal groups, institutions, generating public knowledge on the legal status of the transferred assets emerged. The Athenians, for instance, posted a slab known as horos on land in order to signal that the land was under the charge of a security interest (Arrunadã, 2003, 6). In Roman law the transfer of land was sometimes operated through a court procedure in which the purchaser stated that the land was his. Because there was no opposition he was awarded ownership (in iure cessio). The simulated trial provided public knowledge on the transfer (Kaser, 1971). Also the other legal form of transfer, the mancipatio, involved ceremonies providing some publicity to the transfer (Garro, 2004, 13; Kaser, 1971). In Hellenistic Egypt recordation was particularly well developed. In each district a book, entering all transactions aff ecting land and slaves (diastromata) was kept. Certifi cates