Is Finders Keepers Legal
The saying “finders, guardians” is well known, but you can`t always legally store lost items in California. The crime of embezzlement of lost property can get you serving a prison sentence, so it`s important that you understand how to legally handle the items you discover. If you take the right steps, you can make sure that you are not committing a crime and that you are legally preserving the property. Since animals are mobile and can therefore lose themselves, the loss of goods that are a valuable animal has its own rules. A lost valuable animal usually does so by leaving its owner`s property and arriving on another owner`s land. Such an animal is legally called a stray animal. Stray animals are usually limited to domestic animals such as cattle and not wild animals. Since ordinary pets are not considered valuable animals, dogs and cats are never considered strays. The status of people who find people looking for as employees or tenants of the landowner complicates matters, as employees and tenants have legitimate access to non-public areas of a landowner`s property that others would not have without intrusion. However, employees and tenants typically lose a higher claim for loss of property to their employers or landlords if the property is found in the course of their employment or outside the actual rental space. [6] There is an old saying that possession is nine-tenths of the law and goes back perhaps centuries. This means that in most cases, the owner of a piece of land is the rightful owner, without any evidence to the contrary. Colloquially, this can be called Finder, Keeper.
The contradiction with this principle is theft by discovery, which can occur if the transformation occurs after someone else`s property has been found. According to the laws of several states, if you find more than a certain amount of money, you must bring it to the police if you cannot identify the owner and return it yourself. The amount of money you need varies by state. For example, in New York it is $20, while in California it is $100. As a rule, laws honor the keepers of the finder. If, after handing over money or lost items to the police, the true owner is nowhere to be found, the researcher may become the owner after a certain period of time. However, in some places, there may be some restrictions depending on the value of the item. If you found a gigantic pile of banknotes, what would you do? That was the dilemma faced by a dog walker in Spalding, Lincolnshire, when she saw £60,000 swimming in a stream.
She handed it over to the police, who are conducting a forensic investigation into the money to find out where it came from. But is it ever Finders Keeper? My neighbor found a purse the other day, and she had a lot of money in it. We were tempted to keep things easy because nowadays anyone can use money, but we thought about it and wondered if it was illegal. Dear Attorney Mark: I have a legal question for you. If you find someone`s wallet on the street or on a sidewalk, what do you have to do legally with it? In general, if you find more than a few dollars, it could be criminal not to do the right thing, after all, cash is probably never an “abandoned” property (which is usually completely legal). Although, as one Michigan man learns, there may not be much the police can do when a box full of money falls from the back of your truck and blows into the wind. Only about $7,000 of his $30,000 in cash was recovered. An example of this would be someone throwing goods away with garbage. In this case, it is actually “Finders Keeper” and the person who finds the property becomes the new owner. This article was amended on 20 November 2013 to take account of the ambiguity of the legal situation. It was released on September 21. It was further amended in November 2013 to clarify how to treat finds classified as treasures and to correct the reference to the “Chief of Police Offers Association”.
It`s The Law was written by attorney Mark K. McCown in response to legal questions he received. If you have a question, please direct it to Mark K. McCown, 311 Park Avenue, Ironton, Ohio 45638, or by email to LawyerMark@yahoo.com. We reserve the right to consolidate and/or address all issues. But if you want to stay on the right side of the law, think twice before wasting the briefcase full of money you found. That`s because most states have laws on when the Finder Guardians` Playground Rule applies. If you find lost property that has value or is clearly not abandoned, keeping it can charge you a flight fee. Just like the playground rule, which requires you to announce according to Finder`s Keepers if you find lost items (including money) in the real world, you must notify the authorities, especially if you want to keep them legally. You must have committed these three acts to commit a crime. Otherwise, you didn`t divert anything and the finders, the tutors would apply.
