Common trope of fiction and cinema: there’s buried treasure, people find the treasure.
Now suppose the treasure were buried somewhere in…the Arizonan desert or somewhere (but not federal or government land.) Say two rivals reach the treasure at the same time. The encounter is likely to turn violent, but legally who gets it, is it literally a matter of who reached the gold bars a few seconds before the other party did?
You forgot the claims of the original owner. For example a company found a sunken ship:
Presumably depends on local laws. In England, such finds have to be declared to the legal authorities, and there’s a legal process for determining ownership and entitlement (as between finder, landowner and the Crown as representative of the community/government) to any inherent financial value.
Britain had treasure trove as a common law principle until relatively recently, which differentiated the ownership of gold and bullion treasure on the basis of it having been hidden versus lost. How you imputed that on a chance discovery of a 2000-year-old Roman bracelet was obviously tricky and required a judicial inquest. It had significant implications for the ownership and disbursement of archaeological finds. Thankfully, that common law principle has been replaced with saner statutes [Treasure Act referred to above].
The principle was that if gold and silver was hidden with an intent for recovery, then it still belonged to the person or to the Crown if they could not claim it. if it was lost then it belonged to the first person who found it or the landowner.
The law of who owns stuff is really complex, even without considering its value as treasure attracting chancers like flies.
A famous case, with eight years of legal headaches for the finder of a Spanish treasure ship, but SCOTUS handed him a win in the end: Nuestra Señora de Atocha - Wikipedia
This was on the BBC today:
Two men found guilty of stealing a £3m Viking hoard have been ordered to pay more than £600,000 each or spend five more years in jail.
George Powell and Layton Davies were jailed in 2019 for not declaring their find of coins and jewellery in a field in Herefordshire four years earlier.
Judge Nicholas Cartwright told the men he believed about 270 coins are still being deliberately hidden by them.
They must pay the money within three months or spend more time in jail.
Thirty coins, which have also been recovered, had a previous estimated worth of between £10,000 and £50,000, but at a proceeds of crime hearing at Worcester Crown Court, the judge said they had been valued by the British Museum at £501,000.
The remaining 270 coins were valued at the lowest of £10,000 each. Mr Cartwright reduced the estimate by 10% to account for any possible damage, giving a value for the missing coins of £2.4m.
The value of the returned jewellery was put at £275,000, the court heard.
The men, who sold items they found to dealers, were convicted of theft and concealing their find, with Powell, 38, of Newport, jailed for 10 years and Davies, of Pontypridd, 51, for eight-and-a-half.
Coin seller Simon Wicks, 56, was also convicted on the concealment charge and jailed for five years.
There was a case in Europe a few years ago when hunters used metal detectors to locate some treasure. The country they were searching did not allow use of electronics. They were close to the boarder of a country that did allow metal detecting so they carried the hoard across the border and claimed that is where it was found. I don’t remember the details but they got caught and had to forfeit the treasure.
Trying to boil down a world’s worth of detail into a general principle, the law is more likely to recognise the legal rights of these people ahead of any casual finder:
Of course, smaller finds are usually just pocketed and sold by the finder, so that the other three never even know.
Lots of detectorists will find a few coins, a ring, etc, and no one cares that much. The honest detectorists will try to find the owner of such things as wedding rings, but other than that, they don’t report any small find. Of course, when they stumble upon an ancient trove, like in GB, they better fess up.
what’s the story with shipwrecks? i thought there was a salvage right?
I thought I had read that once everyone abandons ship, for example, then anyone who recovers it (or finds pieces along the shore) is entitled to salvage them and takes ownership?
How did the treasure get where it was found? Shipwrecks are often owned in perpetuity by whoever insured the ship and/or its cargo and paid out claims for loss. Lloyd’s of London has been around for centuries and they keep good records…
See post 5 for one key American case.
Stuff that washes ashore is different from salvage.
Cargo that is found in the sea is either flotsam, jetsam, or lagan. Goods that float on the water and that come from a shipwrecked vessel are flotsam. Jetsam is cargo, ship parts, or equipment that was thrown overboard to lighten a ship in distress and that sinks and remains under the water. Lagan is cargo thrown overboard and sunk but marked with a buoy so that it can later be retrieved.
No matter how long flotsam, jetsam, or lagan remains in the water it belongs, by maritime law, to the original owner. A finder may hold it for salvage; that is, the owner is entitled to claim it if he pays a proper reward to the finder. If the owner does not claim the goods within a reasonable time, they belong to the finder. In England, such cargo belongs to the country if it is not claimed within a year and a day.
Flotsam, jetsam, or lagan that comes ashore is called wreck. In the United States, wreck belongs to the shore property owner unless the original owner claims it. In England, wreck belongs to the country.
flotsam, jetsam, and lagan - Students | Britannica Kids | Homework Help.
If it’s not federal or government land, it must be owned by someone, so in that case the owner of the land has claim to the treasure, not the trespassers.