Definition
Bona waviata (Latin/Law Latin: "waived goods") refers to stolen goods thrown away or abandoned by a thief during flight — typically to avoid capture or to speed escape — which, at common law, escheated to the Crown. The doctrine rested on the principle that a thief who abandoned stolen property in the course of fleeing forfeited any claim to those goods, and because the rightful owner's title was clouded by the manner of abandonment, the goods passed to the sovereign rather than reverting automatically to the original owner.
The term is closely connected to the law of waifs. A waif was any stolen article abandoned or cast aside by a fleeing thief; bona waviata is simply the Latin formulation of that same concept, used interchangeably in early English legal sources with "waived goods."
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Common Confusion
Bona waviata is frequently conflated with bona vacantia (ownerless goods that fall to the Crown by default) and with estray (stray animals found wandering without a known owner). These are distinct categories. Bona vacantia concerns goods that never had — or no longer have — a traceable owner; bona waviata presupposes a theft and a specific act of abandonment during flight. Estray concerns animals specifically. Researchers encountering any of these terms in historical sources should not assume they are interchangeable; the triggering facts and legal consequences differ.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is an archaic term of English law with no surviving operational significance in modern American or British jurisprudence. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in:
1. Early English legal sources, Year Books, and treatises citing Coke and Blackstone, where waif law was a live area of Crown prerogative.
2. Historical property law surveys discussing the scope of royal prerogative over abandoned or forfeit property.
3. Comparative law discussions contrasting English common law with civilian systems, where the equivalent concepts were handled differently.
The primary research trap is terminological slippage. Because bona waviata, bona vacantia, deodand, and estray all describe distinct pathways by which property reached the Crown, misreading one for another in historical sources produces analytical error. Any document using "waived goods" or the Latin form should prompt the researcher to identify the triggering event precisely: was there a theft? Was there flight? Was the property abandoned, or merely unowned?
A secondary trap: the term appears in sources alongside bona fide and bonae fidei, which are entirely unrelated concepts (good faith in contracts and conveyancing). Because the dictionary entries for these terms sit adjacent in alphabetical compilations, researchers skimming historical dictionaries may conflate them. They share only Latin roots.
Jurisdictional note for American researchers: bona waviata as a Crown prerogative concept did not transplant cleanly into American law after independence. American jurisdictions generally addressed abandoned or stolen property through statutory frameworks rather than through inherited prerogative doctrine. Encountering this term in an American case or brief is unusual and likely signals either historical argument or scholarly citation rather than operative law.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries show strong agreement on the core definition: all four identify bona waviata as goods stolen and abandoned by the thief in flight, which passed to the sovereign under common law. The citation to 1 Bl. Comm. 296 appears in both Bouvier and Burrill, and Coke (5 Co. 109b) is cited in Black's and Burrill, giving the doctrine firm grounding in the classical common law authorities.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds the useful navigational note that a researcher should cross-reference "waifs" (the English-language equivalent), and the entry gestures toward associated remedy questions — though the Rapalje text as excerpted is fragmentary and incomplete, apparently running into an adjacent entry. This is a known hazard of historical legal dictionaries, where entries were set in dense type and pagination errors or abridgments sometimes cut off material. Researchers should treat the Rapalje entry here as incomplete and rely on Blackstone and Coke directly for the full doctrinal treatment.
None of the four dictionaries discuss what happened when the original owner sought to reclaim waived goods, or what showing was required to establish the goods were abandoned in flight rather than simply lost. Blackstone's Commentaries (1 Bl. Comm. 296–298) provides the more complete treatment and is the appropriate primary source for any substantive research into the doctrine.
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Jurisdictional Note
Bona waviata is a doctrine of English common law rooted in Crown prerogative. It did not survive as operative law in the United States, where prerogative-based property rights were not inherited by the federal or state governments in the same form. Modern abandoned-property questions in the U.S. are governed by statute. In England and Wales, the Crown's prerogative rights over waifs and similar property have been largely absorbed into statutory frameworks governing ownerless and abandoned goods.
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