tye,
Since we have had a related discussion previously, I have looked at various man pages. I guess I should have indicated to check the local man pages on chown but keep in mind that in doing so it might not make it portable. Here are some of the variations I have seen:
Allowed only if UID = 0
Allowed if no quota restrictions
Allowed, but strip any setuid/setgid bits
Allowed only if UID = 0 unless "set rstchown = 1" appears in /etc/system
The most systems won't allow it unless superuser bit actually came from perldoc -f chown. It goes on to say how you can detect on a POSIX system if you have the right or not.
Cheers - L~R