I saw a documentary about an art heist in Holland and they said the thieves may have done it because if they can hold on to the stolen paintings for 30 years, due to dutch law, they will legally become the rightful owners of those paintings. In other words, apparently dutch law allows adverse possession for stolen property.
I’ve never heard of anything like this before. I assume the statute of limitations for theft in the Netherlands is less than 30 years, so if it were true, presumably after 30 years they couldn’t be charged with the crime or sued civilly (unless their statutes of limitations are tolled for the period the thief is unknown).
There is a rational policy behind allowing adverse possession for the use and ownership of land. But to allow stolen property to become legally owned by the thief after X years is pretty ridiculous, and I have a hard time believing this is actually how Dutch law works. The media gets stuff like this wrong all the time.
I do suppose you could argue that it’s better that the thief come forward and say “ok I stole it 30 years ago, here it is, I now legally own it, so suck it bitch” than to have the painting hidden/lost forever. But that still gives a pretty big incentive to steal expensive art in the Netherlands in the first place. Steal it, hold it for 30 years (or maybe even as little as 20) and then you can sell it legally and make millions. They could have just made the law say after 30 years, you have immunity and won’t get prosecuted if you return it. That would accomplish the same goal of encouraging recovery without creating a theft incentive.
Here are some ifs and buts, as I understand them, being entirely not trained in law and trying to translate. (Here is the link, in Dutch.)
It doesn’t necessarily count if the thief is hiding his crime. (So… always, duh?)
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands has already decided it doesn’t count if goes against “redelijkheid en billijkheid” - reason and fairness. (So… again always, duh?)
It is mentioned that the law is very controversial and that it could lead to the Netherlands being a safe haven for art thieves.
About a month ago the Dutch minister for justice (Ivo Opstelten) mentioned, probably on account of the same heist as the OP’s documentary, that thieves will never come to own their loot. He’s supposedly not entirely correct, where the law is concerned. At the same time, it doesn’t seem all that far from what would happen in practice.
How the law came about? No idea. Maybe someone can imagine something to do with the shipping history, that tends to be where our weird laws come from. Eg, Dutch bailiffs have powers that tend to go further than in most countries, because they needed to be able to seize goods on ships without the ships just sailing off. I’ll ask some law-type friends if they can find out where the law comes from, if no other Dopers know.
So at the very least it only applies to stolen art, and not other stolen property? That begs the question how one defines ‘art’. My Nissan isn’t art but your $800,000 handmade Lamborghini very well may be considered art by many people. So can I steal it and force you to transfer the title to me in 30 years?
English law historically had the concept of market overt, which in some cases extinguished the property interest of a theft victim. It was repealed recently after a high-profile case.
Right, have a reply from a friend, so coming back to this again.
She actually says it doesn’t apply to “cultural goods”: a thief would never become owner of stuff like art works.
For the reason, she says: the law needs to conform to the reality of a situation. If you have something in your possession you need to be the owner after a certain amount of time, the idea being that the object is in your possession and nobody else claims it as theirs.
Further ifs and buts that she added: the 20 years is the time in which the rightful owner can claim their possession. So I think they only need to say something about the thing having been stolen and wanting it back and the deal is off.
I’m a writer, trying to round up a story that may involve the Art Possession Rights law in Holland, depending on what I find. Specifically, the question of what the law is, how it might or might not reward thieves at the end of a 20 or 30 year period. Very interested to hear history in regard to Dutch shipping history (Gracer?) I should mention that I’m writing a fiction piece, though I also can’t run riot over the facts. My sense is, like all laws, this depends upon interpretation. MOST helpful would be the origins of the law, and what, if any, are the precedents. Is there some very old case? Has it not recently been tested? I’m based in New York. I might travel to the Netherlands if necessary. Any information or leads/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Adverse possession usually requires openness. You can’t steal someone’s property and hide it in the basement for X years, and then after the time limit runs out pull it out and be declared the new owner.
You’d have to take possession of the property openly. If the true owner wants to get his property back he has to take action from when you start openly using the property.
The purpose of laws like these are to extinguish dead issues. If you’ve been holding yourself out as the owner of such and such property for decades, and nobody else disputes that, then you’re the owner. The property doesn’t have to be held in limbo forever.
This also means that all the stories you hear about people sneaking on to your land once a year for 30 years and then becoming the legal owner are bunk. It doesn’t work this way. The usual case is simply some surveying error where some building has been constructed and stands there for decades, and then somebody looks through some old records and finds that the property line should have been over here instead of over there. In many cases the old property line won’t be restored. The time to dispute the issue is long gone.
This is my understanding too - IIRC the time limit in Canada was 20 years (may have changed).
But yes, the idea is if you openly use and claim something is yours and nobody has challenged it, then it is yours. This prevents a situation where anything may be challenged. But, as I understand, you also must have a valid reason to believe you have legitimate ownership, or at least no reason to believe you don’t own it; AFAIK “I stole it fair and square” isn’t good enough.
(I heard the story about some fellow who bought a house back when houses in a small town were pretty low, in the days before computers. Then the boom went bust and the office he’d been paying his mortgage to closed up. He waited 10 years - I think, then claimed squatter’s rights and took possession. If the people winding up the owner’s business couldn’t reconcile all the records, that was their problem, not his…)
Adverse possession pertaining to property rights is alive and well in New York. My father’s estate was sued for it. The neighbor had put his landscaping on a strip of land outside our privet hedge, and my father never took issue with it–for thirty years. When my father died and the estate was being sold, the neighbor sued to claim that strip of land, and won. Had my father gotten, regularly over the years, a document from the neighbor that acknowledged that he, the neighbor, had his landscaping on my father’s land, the neighbor never would have had a case. Alternatively, my father just could have moved the privet to the property line and taken out the neighbors landscaping, but he wasn’t the type. Thank you for insights and replies, and I’d appreciate more. Yes, in the U.S. the issue seems to be settled somewhere between openness and dispute. I’m tending to think that Market Ouvert plays a large part in the history, when towns were small and you were expected to rout out a thief. Market overt - Wikipedia Anything more, especially in regard to Holland?
So what is the rule for (inadvertent?) possession of stolen goods? I remember having this discussion in the mid-70’s and someone quoted a law abut it. Of course, before Snopes, who knows? (One fellow claimed it was 2 years in Ontario)
I am well aware the rules for real estate property title have changed in the last few decades in several provinces, giving the registry the final word; even to the point where at one point (until the law was fixed) a bogus mortgage if registered on the system conveyed right to foreclose to the bank that issued the fraudulent mortgage.
Based on long-ago Property Law class, it’s important not to confuse ownership rights to chattels with limitations of actions.
Suppose you lose something valuable. After X number of years, you can’t bring an action to recover it, even if you find out who currently has it.
However, under Ontario law as it existed {{mumblety-mumble}} years ago, that didn’t mean that the fellow who was in possession now owned it; it just meant that you couldn’t go to court to get it, because the action was barred by the Statute of Limitations. You still were the owner.
But if somehow you re-acquired possession of the object, then the other fellow couldn’t complain, because it had been yours all along.
Not meant as legal advice, because I don’t know if that is still the law in Ontario.
And with respect to real estate, it’s not a change in a last few years: Torrens system has been in place in the NWT and then the three Prairie provinces since the 1880s, when the Dominion Lands Act was passed. The idea of adverse possession is fundamentally at odds with the certainty of title provided by Torrens, so adverse possession has never been allowed since the Dominion Lands Act was passed in these parts.