I didn’t take it, they threw it away.
Who said anything about teaching them a lesson. My point is only that they aren’t being victimized and I have no moral qualms about taking advantage of their own stupidity.
I didn’t take it, I found it. It was abandoned property.
That’s a novel definition of “abandoned property.” To me, “abandoned” suggests no intention of reclaiming the property, like an “abandoned child” is not quite the same thing as a “lost child.” A wallet on the street is “lost” or “mislaid,” not “abandoned.”
Your mom’s abandoned property.
Okay, maybe she’s not. But neither is a wallet on the street. If it were, then it’d be ethical and legal for you to take all the cash from it.
Edit: it’s not novel, it’s nonsense. Read the link: you have a duty to turn lost property over to the proper authorities.
Yeah Im a bit puzzled if the major disqualifier is based on whether its legal or not, as none of the acts are in most jurisdictions - lost or misplaced property usually has pretty clear protocols to be followed.
Otara
There’s nothing in that link about lottery tickets found in the street. It only talks about shit found in buildings.
ETA, if it is illegal to keep the ticket then the whole question is pointless.
I’d return it, but I’d ask for a share. I figure $20 million plus is a big enough windfall gain that they can give me $5 million and still do everything that comes to mind.
Well, not specifically lottery tickets, but not just shit found in buildings:
Which question? The OP’s? It’s still the same ethical/moral question, whether it is technically illegal or not.
I disagree. If it’s illegal, it changes the moral equation because breaking the law would involve putting my family at risk. That would make keeping the money an irresponsible and unethical choice if it was illegal, but not if it was legal.
Would turning it in to the cops even work if you (yes, YOU!) decided to take that route? Even if we assume that the entire police department is on the level and won’t quietly sweep the case under the rug as long as everyone gets a share (which I’d call a fair, but not certain, assumption), how long do lottery tickets last? It could be long enough, but if nobody claims the ticket you get it back after, what was it? A month? Would the ticket still be valid? Is there some law that would keep it valid in an oddly specific case like this? The owner would probably have to claim it pretty fast in order to get the money.
I’m not claiming that taking the money is necessarily right if it would be highly implausible for the person to claim it or you get it back before it expires, but if it was it may be more rational (if still on the gray edge of ethical). Hell, I’d give a good chunk of it to the rightful owner whenever I found them if the options were either have the money go into the aether* or claim it.
When I find stuff that isn’t mine, and I stand a decent chance of being able to find who it does belong to, I will try to find the rightful owner. Returning lost property is the right thing to do, whether the lost property has intrinsic value, extrinsic value, etc. It’s not up to me to decide whether something I find has any real value (being realistic, I don’t look for people who ‘lost’ their candy bar wrapper just in case that wrapper was precious to them. . .).
In reality, it would never occur to me to look up the numbers on the tickets. Hell, if I found the ID before I found the tickets, I’d never know there were tickets, because once I have a name and address, hey, there’s no need for me to be rifling through someone else’s shit, right? But given the hypothetical in the OP, I’d return it. It’s not mine. If I found a wallet with the tickets but no ID, I’d feel differently. Then it’s not so easy to determine who it belongs to. Still, I’d probably turn the wallet (and all contents, including lottery tickets) over to the police, then if no one claims it, it will be mine in time.
One thing no one’s mentioned yet: when a lottery ticket of high value is redeemed, a big deal is made about it. There are usually camera crews, local news, etc. involved. The media wants to know where you bought the ticket. The store that sold the ticket wants to publicize it because it’s good for business. For those of you that say you would keep and cash it (and I’m not judging you for that, I’m just saying what I personally would do), this aspect could possibly jam you up. Of course, because you have the guy’s ID, you know where he lives, so you could always say “Oh, my great Aunt Tillie always sends me a lottery ticket for my birthday; she lives in (city/state of wallet owner)”.
One more thing for people who would keep it: if you’ve never read the novel A Simple Plan by Scott Smith, maybe you should. 
This must be the first time in like forever for you, but I gotta tell you: you’re wrong. Reread the first couple of sentences in the section about lost property:
Dollar bills are worthless until they are spent. What’s the difference?
I love that book, because at every turn, the guy does what I hope he’s going to do, and see how it all turned out! :eek:
[Bolding mine]
Isn’t that what you’re doing by cashing the lottery ticket, getting something for nothing? You didn’t even spend the dollar to buy the ticket.
Yes, I would be just as greedy and wouldn’t deserve it anymore, but at least I didn’t go buying the ticket and TRYING to get something for nothing. God just gave it to me.
Not to sidetrack but I’m confused on a point here. Let’s say I own a gold watch. I sell it to a friend. Following this, my friend and I drift apart and lose contact with each other.
Years later I meet you. By an amazing coincidence, I discover that you have the gold watch I used to own. I ask you how you obtained it and you tell me you found it in a public place. You were unable to find the owner. Neither of us know how to contact my old friend (who may not even have still owned the watch when it was lost).
But are you saying that, according to common law, I can now make a claim on the watch based on the fact that I was a previous possessor of it? And that my claim as a former owner is stronger than yours as the person who found it after it had been lost?
That seems wrong. I would assume that once I surrender the ownership of the watch to another person, by selling it or giving it away, then I lose any future claims to it.
It would definitely be interesting to have an attorney, especially one who specializes in property rights, weigh in. I noticed that clause and wondered something similar. Maybe “previous possessors” refers to people who possessed it between the true owner’s losing it and the current person who found it? Maybe “possessor” and “owner” mean something different, in other words?
IANAL, but I think that is pretty straightfoward. The owner may or may not be the previous posessor, or may own only part of the property. In the case of a wallet, it’s probably true that all the contents are in fact owned by the previous possessor, but it’s easy to imagine that they might be carrying something for someone else, or have borrowed it for some reason.
The implication in the OP, it seems to me, is that nobody is ever going to know, otherwise, it’s not really much of an ethics/morality question.