Short answer. Yes. Article 2106 gives the pledgor that exact remedy. If the thing pledged is in danger of being lost or impaired through the pledgee's negligence or wilful act, the pledgor may require that it be deposited with a third person — moving it out of careless hands without ending the pledge itself.
What the law says
If through the negligence or wilful act of the pledgee, the thing pledged is in danger of being lost or impaired, the pledgor may require that it be deposited with a third person.
Civil Code, Article 2106 — Deposit on Danger of Loss. Read the full provision →
The pledgee holds the thing but must take care of it
In a pledge, the debtor hands the creditor possession of the thing as security — a piece of jewellery, a vehicle, a certificate of shares. The pledgee holds it, but ownership stays with the pledgor, and the pledgee is bound to take care of the thing with the diligence of a good father of a family. Possession is given for security, not so the pledgee may treat the item carelessly. The difficulty is that the pledgor has parted with the very thing at risk: it now sits in someone else's hands. Article 2106 answers what the pledgor can do when those hands are endangering it.
The remedy: deposit with a third person
The remedy is targeted and preserves the security. If through the negligence or wilful act of the pledgee, the thing pledged is in danger of being lost or impaired, the pledgor may require that it be deposited with a third person. Rather than leaving the pledgor to watch his property deteriorate or wait for it to be destroyed, the law lets him have it moved into neutral custody. The pledge is not dissolved and the debt is not affected; the thing is simply taken out of the pledgee's careless keeping and placed with a third person who will hold it safely for the duration of the pledge. It is a protective transfer, not a release.
What triggers it, and what it does not do
Two things define when this applies. First, the danger must stem from the pledgee's own negligence or wilful act — his carelessness or a deliberate act on his part — not from an outside event he did not cause. Second, there must be a real danger that the thing will be lost or impaired, meaning destroyed, damaged, or reduced in value; a mere preference to have it elsewhere is not enough. And note the limit on what the remedy achieves: it changes the custodian, not the relationship. The pledgor does not recover his property or extinguish the debt; he secures the thing's safety while the pledge continues.
What this means in practice
In practice, invoking this means being able to show both the pledgee's fault and the resulting danger — poor storage exposing the item to damage, mishandling, exposure to theft, or the like. Evidence of the condition the thing is being kept in, and of the pledgee's conduct, is what supports the demand. The relief is that the item be deposited with a third person, so it is worth proposing a suitable, neutral custodian. Because the pledge and the debt remain in place, this does not resolve the underlying loan; it simply stops the security from being ruined in the meantime, which is precisely its purpose.