If you find buried treasure, can you keep it?

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

This thread probably deserves to be bumped in view of recent developments.

Perhaps the mods should change the title to: "If you steal someone’s currency collection, bury it, then dig it up and claim it’s treasure trove, then can you keep it? "

Men who claimed to find buried treasure arrested

It would appear the answer is a resounding NO!.

God, what scumbags.

[Gfactor]

@rainy

If they aren’t convicted of anything, does the treasure then belong to them to do whatever (legally) they wish to with it?

-rainy

1. Acquittal of a criminal charge carries little weight in a civil case. Indeed, it’s probably not even admissible. The burden of proof in a criminal case is much higher than in a civil case.

“[The acquittal did] not prove that the defendant is innocent; it merely proves the existence of a reasonable doubt as to his guilt… [T]he jury verdict in the criminal action did not negate the possibility that a preponderance of the evidence could show that [the defendant] was engaged in an unlicensed firearms business… It is clear that the difference in the relative burdens of proof in the criminal and civil actions precludes the application of the doctrine of collateral estoppel.”

http://www.law.harvard.edu/publications/evidenceiii/cases/dowling.htm
*
And see* the OJ civil case .

2. Whether or not they were acquitted, the case boils down to some old fashioned property law, discussed in my earlier posts.

The prior possessor of property wins against a subsequent holder of the property and the subsequent holder may not assert lack of good title to the property as a defense (this is called* jus tertii*) against a prior possessor.

[muldoonthief]

A judge recently dismissed the charges. No indication from the story whether they get to keep the money. According to the video linked from the story, the defense attorney successfully argued that since the owner of the barn wasn’t aware of the existence of the money, it was abandoned property.

(Note - I received permission from Moderator samclem to resurrect this thread).

[Gfactor]

Legally that’s gibberish. How does the property owner’s ignorance show that somebody else intended to abandon the money? And I think it’s pretty clear that the defendant’s thought they were taking the barn owner’s money. If they hadn’t, they could have taken advantage of the Massachusett’s lost property statute, and had the money within a year. If they took what they believed to be somebody else’s property, they could still be convicted of attempted larceny.

§ 1. Report of lost money or goods by finder

Any person who finds lost money or goods of the value of three dollars or more, the owner of which is unknown, shall within two days report the finding thereof to the officer in charge at a police station in the town where said property was found, or, if there is no police station, post notice thereof in two public places therein, or, instead of such report or posting, cause notice thereof to be advertised in a newspaper published therein.

. . . .

§ 4. Rights of finder if no owner appears

If the owner of lost money or goods does not appear within one year after the finding thereof, they shall enure to the finder, provided he has complied with section one.

http://www.animallaw.info/statutes/stusmast_ch134_1_7.htm#s1

[Captain_Carrot]

@Spectre of Pithecanthropus

Ooh, I saw that on the news the other day. All those different kinds of money they used to have – gold and silver certificates, commercial bank notes, and so on–are fascinating to me. Not to mention the gold and silver coins as well. Now all the currency we have is boring and homogenous, and the coins are worth so laughably little we don’t even bother to carry them around any more.

Well, that’s not the only reason. Coins are heavy, harder to store (bills can be folded)
and hard. If we still had $20 coins, people might well not carry them.

[Chronos]

Am I reading this correctly to say, further, that if I find a treasure trove on someone else’s land it’s mine to keep (instead of the current owner’s)?

As I understand the (original, common law) treasure trove concept, it is necessary that the finder be on the property legally in the first place. But of course, although US law is largely based on the old Common Law, it’s not absolutely bound by it, and legislators can pass further laws contrary to it.

Roald Dahl wrote a fascinating non-fiction account of a case in England where a man hired to plow a field found, in the course of his plowing, a stash of silver tableware dating back to Roman times. Unfortunately, he was cheated out of the treasure (or more precisely, out of its value, since British law requires that gold or silver treasure trove be turned over to the government for just compensation) by an unscrupulous neighbor who told him that it was just pewter, and worth nothing other than as a pretty little conversation piece.