A Cleveland contractor found what amounted to a $2.7 million fortune in the walls of a house he was renovating. The homeowner offered him 10%, but he wants to keep it all, his lawyers enacting a centuries old “treasure trove” common law provision. Steel boxes contained rare 1929-series Cleveland Federal Reserve bank notes, worth about $85 each, $500 bills and a $1,000 bill. Tipster Zakarth quipped, “If the contractor had found a poison leak would he take ownership of that?” What do you think?
Who gets the fortune found in house walls? [Chron] (Thanks to Zakarth!)
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Lets as Nicky Cage and National Treasure 3: Hunt for stuff in walls.
Sad news is, the screenplay was just optioned.
I hope she fights him in court until his lawyer fees equal more than the actual money, THEN if he wins the case and gets the money I hope the IRS goes after him for their share of ALL and by the time it is all said done the guy ends up HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN DEBT!
The way I see it should be, the homeowner gets the money because there is no difference between her tearing the wall herself, and paying something to tear this wall. The contractor was paid for his services which he delivered.
I don’t know…
If I were the contractor, I’d be happy with 10%. ‘Cuz 10% of zero is always zero.
If I were the homeowner, I’d probably split it 50/50. I don’t get people’s greed these days. Half of 2.7 mil is 1.35 mil I didn’t have before, so I’d be thankful to the contractor and split it evenly. After a long lawsuit and lawyers fees, I’d probably get much, much less than the original 1.35 mil.
You don’t go around people’s lawns looking for money and expect people to be your friend, especially if you start to dig.
In this case here, it is her house, it was found in her house. Whether it was in a candy dish or in her walls it was still her property.
Now she was willing to give him a little bit as a personal reward for his honesty. He felt it was not enough and there we go court case begins.
This thing went way too far because someone got greedy, nothing more to it. Not knowing it was there doesn’t make it not your property. If a person doesn’t know that there is copper in their A/C unit, (they do naturally) it doesn’t give you the right to plunder it.
If I don’t know there is hidden treasures buried 1 foot down on my lawn, does not give you the right to go around digging stuff up. It does give me the right to call the police and have you arrested though.
@ceejeemcbeegee:
What was found was not worth that much, it would have been what it equaled to today based on inflation. It is really only worth $182,000 as it is their face value. Anything more they could get would be whatever a collector decides to pay for it.
Dude the question here REALLY is:
Who touched it last?
The discussion of treasure trove law aside, I think the home owner should have rights to everything. The contractor was specifically there as a well…contractor for the homeowner. Meaning, he was acting as an agent for the homeowner. I think the INTENT of the law (well atleast how I feel the intent should be) is to allow people who happen to be on someone else’s property treasure hunting to keep what they find if it’s specifically been hidden there by someone other than the property owner.
@ShadowFalls: Still… found money is a gift, not a right, IMHO. The fact that the owner is offering a 10% “thank you” should be enough. But greed has set in and now both parties will probably end up with close to nothing.
@ceejeemcbeegee:
The thing is, as of right now, the contractor has more rights than the homeowner. The court will have to overturn, or ignore, the common law in order to award it to the homeowner. Typically, the homeowner is considered to be in “constructive” possession of anything in their home or on their property. This means that while they don’t have actual possession, because they don’t know it is there, the law considers them to be in possession nonetheless. This is an old law, but it is still the law. The judge would be well within his powers to give everything to the contractor.
Personally, when it comes to treasure on private property (treasure being anything a previous owner left on the property, hidden, without telling the next owner, and that next owner telling the next, etc) should be split 50/50 as a matter of law.
The treasure trove concept should apply as is to treasure on public/government land. Embedded treasure should be modified to unintentionally embedded treasure (shipwreaks, money that fell and is now in the ground.)
Buried treasure intentionally placed there is easy to show. In a chest? Buried intentionally. Four or Five coins in a ditch? Unintentional.
@ShadowFalls:
Are you making the assumption that I just tresspass on people’s lawn & start digging with a shovel? If you knew anything about the hobby…. you’d know that we take great care in when detecting & digging in people’s lawns …. this includes the use of thin probes (to probe for objects) & making a small hole (the size of a quarter) to the use of a hand-trowel to make trapdoor “plugs” so that the grass/lawn is not damaged. There are special techniques that are used. And most object are found within 5 inches of the surface… we dont dig to china.
ANd it isnt the lure of “money”/profit that most detectorists seek (except the beach detectorists). It is more along th lines of the thrill of the discovery, the fun of the search & the end result… the “trophy”. (Note: I hate to use the word trophy, but it the closest word i could use to describe it). And “money” isnt the only thing we look to find… old household artifacts like watchfobs, thimbles, marbles, unusual keys/locks, silverware etc. etc…. are sought also. Some of my favorite finds have practically no monetary value. Hell! I’d pay for the true value of the things I find, but most homeowners see a silver coin & automatically think its worth way more than it is & if you offer to pay its true value… you are looked at as trying to buy it for a song!
@cde: Um… it’s on his property, he has a deed to that property. I have all sorts of stuff that once belonged to family that I don’t know about specifically but it’s still mine. (family house)
@forgottenpassword:
forgot to mention that we get the owner’s permission to detect the property.
In fact… its common practice to offer to find a lost ring in a person’s yard if we are allowed to keep everything else Or permission to detect another property that has more potential (old property that has a lot of activity on it thoughout the years). And most detectorists will return any item that can be traced to an owner. Its fun & we love to tell stories of returning lost items. A perfect example… class rings. Class rings can be traced back to the owner & returned. And sometimes…the owner will flippantly say thanks & slam the door in your face, or accuse you of stealing it because they think you want a reward. We dont want a reward, just a appreciative “Thank you”… or at MOST a decent yard or property to detect on if possible…. if not..no big deal.
so they agreed to split it, greed got the best of them & with the amount of time the lawyers will bank sorting this out, they’ll each end up with enough to buy a pez dispenser.
if it was me, 50/50 & call it a day (but if i was the homeowner, i’d want the contractor to finish the work free considering he just made $1.4 million by ripping out some walls).
@forgottenpassword: It’s one thing to have prior permission to both hunt on the land AND keep everything you find, but you have repeatedly stated you feel justified keeping half and reporting the other half or even keeping everything and not reporting it, because you feel laws should be more “fair” (in your opinion) toward the “detectorist.” Just because you disagree with a law, doesn’t make your conflicting actions any more legal. You sound quite comfortable with blatent burglary.
@Pylon83: I disagree. It may qualify as treasure trove, but some jurisdictions only look at metal as treasure, not currency(some do both). And the doctrine is hardly universal. If it’s not trove, then someone hired onto your property to do work that finds -hidden- valuables is, in fact, not allowed to keep it.
Although it’s a substantial amount it isn’t, unfortunately as the headline implies $2.7 million. That’s adjusted for inflation–and I don’t think you get interest on money in your walls.
Unless the contractor’s name is Indiana Jones and he had to run from a giant boulder to bring the “treasure” out. I don’t see how he should get to keep it. He was hired to fix the joint search for the damn holy grail.
In truth though, the only people who found anything of value here are the lawyers. They found two suckers who can’t agree and will now piss away the money in court. It’d be cheaper just to seal the money back up into the wall.
@Fait Accompli: What is this “sort of”? Forgottenpassword TOTALLY creeps me out…makes me wanna put a fence up around my house and get video cameras installed.
@forgottenpassword: The more I read your comments the more it sounds like you are trying to justify your methods. I have been a metal detectorist for a few years and I have never once “replaced” a found item with a coin or other object.
I get permission from the land owner and make an agreement about any possible finds and then at the end of my hunt we sit down and go over the items found. We follow the agreement every time. I have never had anyone not follow an agreement set up prior to me hunting.
Sounds like you need to plan your hunts a bit better and be a bit more honest.
As for the contractor it is all about greed. I agree with most people if the “treasure” was found on her property whether she knew of it’s existence it is still her property. And that in my book makes him nothing more than a common thief. He should have accepted the %10 finders fee and walked away an honest man.
I can’t imagine who would hire him to work on there property after this as I am sure most people would be afraid to leave him alone for 5 seconds for fear he would claim the jewelry or cash as a “treasure”!
Of course the owner of the house should get the money.
What on earth does the contractor think entitles him to something he found in the walls of somebody else’s house???
Jerk.
@nealb:
well, you are correct. However there is often a difference between “Legal” & “fair”.
But what often happens with a verbal agreement (just like in this case)…. the greed of the owner gets the best of them & then all bets are off when something of real value (or something they THINK is of real value) is found. And trying to get a property owner to sign ANYTHING when asking to detect their property is prettymuch pointless. Remember… we are the ones who have had experience dealing with double-crossing propertyowners. We have even been threatened with false tresspassing & property damage complaints unless we completely agree when the owner desides to reneg & keep everything. There is an general understanding that I am not detecting the property jsut so I can give all I find to the propertyowner. I also never said I would keep everything. I said that if you found something extremely valuable (I meant on your own property)… to keep silent about it… because people/government entities would want to take it away from you. I was not talking about something valuable found on someone else’s property. Perhaps I have given the impression that we detectorists find gold dubloons & jewels while out detecting someone’s yard. If we are VERY lucky we will find 3-6 old coins tops (which are typically valued at a couple of bucks). If I find once silver coin or an indianhead penny in a yard…. that is a good day for me. Most of the time you find nothing that you are wanting to find. I also said that I will on occassion substitute what i find if I believe the owner will take it all. I am talking about one mercury dime for another mercury dime (sometimes more)…. the difference is that the coin I found has a non-monetary value to me & the one I offer up doesnt. I guess that is dishonest, but not by much because the same monetary value is given (sometimes more) when I substitute. If I find a dime… I would show one or two in its place when showing the owner.
And I still stand by my stance on keeping half a extremely valuable cache & then reporting the rest to the property owner…. because we have had experience with greedy property owners & with human nature & know what WILL happen. Anytime valuables (or what someone THINKS is valuable) are involved…. people get greedy. If I took the WHOLE cache & never reported any of it to the homeowner…. that would DEFINATELY be wrong. I only want half.
Regarding the original article… IMO a 50/50 split of a valuable unknown cache is reasonable. No one party should get to keep it all. The property owner would have never known about it had it not been found by the contractor. If you make the laws to where the contractor/finder would get nothing… then they will take it all in the future & never report it to anyone (like it said in the article,,,, it is a contractor’s dream to find a cache). Its in the interest of all parties to make sure they are rewarded for doing the right thing.
I really hope this asshole thinks he can retire on $2.7 million, because if he wins it, nobody’s ever going to hire him again.
To me it’s pretty cut and dry…if I own the house, I own everything in and within it. Regardless of who finds it.
If I let you in my house and you find a $100 bill under the couch, do you take ownership of it? I think not.
@sly100100:
Well, could be I AM attempting to justify my methods. If after 10 years metal detecting & being screwed out of finds I worked hard for…. maybe you would feel the same? Get back to me after you spend 4 hours in the hot sun, poking & prodding for every find to only find a bunch of trash & a single seated or baber dime (the one you’d been hoping to find for years)…. to only have it snatched away by some smirking landowner who will probably throw it in a drawer somewhere after he finds out how much it is REALLY worth. Wait till it happens more often…. your stance may change.
I hope the contractor knows a good dentist & orthopaedic surgeon. Because he’ll need them after a thick guy named Vinny comes over and knocks his teeth out & breaks both his kneecaps.
I’m just sayin’.
@Pylon83: I did read and if the contractor has a legal claim on the money thanks to the law, the law needs to be changed because it is unfair and ridiculous.
@forgottenpassword: Hey guess what. If you can’t do your job without breaking the law, find a new job.
This post applies to debt-collectors as well.
@forgottenpassword:
Just because you worked hard for something doesn’t mean you’re legally entitled to it. If you work your ass off detecting a 10-acre lot, find $10 worth of coins, and pocket them, sure you’re getting “paid” a terrible “salary” and would probably feel like you’re somehow entitled to it; but that doesn’t make it any more yours if the law says what is on someone’s property is their own. You might feel even more warm and fuzzy by giving the owner $5 worth of the coins. If keeping $10 is stealing, then so is keeping $5. But you’re right that there’s definitely a difference between “fair” and “legal” in many cases. You can keep justifying all you want, but that will never make keeping someone else’s stuff for your own more legal, ever.
In addition, your Mercury dime for a real dime switch doesn’t cut it either. Many people are coin collectors and find as much satisfaction out of a Mercury dime as you would. Either way, even a newly minted coin often has differing collectors and face values. You can’t assume the collector’s value matters to yourself and only the face value matters to the rightful owner.
I would say that the spirit of the treasure trove law was to protect finds of archaeological significance unearthed by….OMIGOSH….ARCHAEOLOGISTS! Or people that are wanting to search a property for the sole purpose of finding something of intrinsic or even real value.
The contractor was not there for EITHER purpose. He was not there to look for treasure, or dig up artifacts, the contractor was there to remodel the homeowner’s house.
@Pylon83: He was contracted to do a job for the homeowner, he finds money while doing his job. Money is his. That’s what contract law pretty much sums up. Before you open your mouth about something you don’t know why don’t you research it.
[en.wikipedia.org],_mislaid,_and_abandoned_property
Ties directly into contract law. He was contracted to do work, he found said objects while doing nothing outside his normal scope of work. If he was working on a separate part of the house and accidentally put a hole in the wall on the other side, then it is not his and that is where contract law comes into play. In this case it is considered treasure trove or abandoned property, either way it belongs to the finder. In this case the finder had a right to be in that area working on the house and that is why it belongs to the contractor.
@FromThisSoil: If I lose my wallet in your house, is my money yours?
@Buran: One, family property means it has been left to you by right of it being family. And was not hidden away intentionally.
But I bet your one of those old biddies that would keep a kid’s baseball if it got knocked into your yard….
@Pylon83: If that’s really the case, it’s a highly flawed law, and I hope this case will prompt a serious review of it.
@MrEvil: Exactly. If the contractor was there to dig a hole for the pool and he struck oil, would he then be able to claim rights to the oil? I would hope not.
Why ask the question? Of course it’s the homeowner. If he had found a body, would the police be grilling him or the homeowner?
Put another way, what if he found a rat’s nest where the rat had been gathering family memento’s for years (pack rat)? If the nest happened to have gandma’s valuable old wedding ring (which has been lost and therefore technically abandoned for 50 years), does the contractor have the right to take it then?
By the way, this comes under the, “I don’t care what’s legal, but what’s right” category.
The fence contractor I hired to build me a privacy fence accidentally found buried “treasure”, that being the bones of Mittens, a cat that died 12 years ago.
The contractor promptly went to his lawyer because I refused to give him 50% of Mittens bones, as I first indicated I would. I realized the value of said kitten bones and offered him only 10% of the skull.
The case is pending.
@forgottenpassword:
Here’s my stance: you should find a new hobby. Either you’re not setting down your terms clearly or you’re not enforcing them. In either case, stealing or swapping out your findings is not the correct solution.
A couple years ago, I was doing some painting work at the house of this really rich couple, and when I was moving some furniture around, under the sofa I found a copy of this videotape… I don’t think they even knew they had it!
It was kinda hot and sweaty that day (they didn’t have the A/C on high), so I felt fairly justified in keeping it and eventually selling it, and now I sit by the pool at my own mansion and post on Consumerist all day.
Finders keepers rocks.
@iamme99: Its not like the contractor was remodeling the house on their own. They were employed by the owner to remodel the house. What if he found a hidden room. An empty hidden room. Does he get the room in the middle of the house?
The treasure trove concept is outdated at the least, and frankly I don’t see how it was ever conceived that criminal trespass should be rewarded. It flies in the face of standard property law and should not be applied here.
You know what is sad? the attorneys are going to get most of that now.
@Pylon83: Have you read the articles linked to in the comments? Treasure trove doesn’t apply in most jurisdictions, and even jurisdictions that once used it tend to overturn it these days. It’s more likely that the owner of the property gets to keep what was found than not.
I got my property book out of the trunk of the car to see which cases we discussed these concepts in.
By the way, with all due respect- the first concept I learnt in law school was- the law has NOTHING to do with what “you think it should be” or what should be the case, etc. One’s personal opinion has no influence on what the law is, and even if a judge regards the law as unjust, unless she can find that the common law precedent was wrongly decided, she can’t just overturn it.
Lost property is property which went out of the owner’s control without his/her knowledge or intent, like if you drop a bracelet on the ground somewhere. Goes to the true owner, then the finder.
Mislaid property is property the true owner has placed somewhere with the intent to return and get, but has forgotten where he placed it. Goes to the owner of the locus in quo, here, the homeowner.
Abandoned property is that which the true owner doesn’t want anymore and has relinquished all rights to, and goes to the finder.
Treasure trove is coin/currency with an “air of antiquity”, having an UNKNOWN owner and in the US “more often than not goes to the finder, although some courts have awarded it to the owner of the locus in quo.”
See Favorite v. Miller, 176 Conn. 310; Benjamin v. Lindner Aviation, 534 N.W. 2d 400; A case that is EXACTLY like this is Hurley v. City of Niagara Falls, NY, 30 A.D.2d 89- except here the property is more likely to be considered Treasure trove than mislaid, because of its antiquity and we know the true owner is dead. The two parties are likely to settle out of court, but if they do go all the way to trial- the property is likely to go to the finder. There is obviously no way in which the true owner is coming back for it so it is unlikely to be characterised as mislaid.
Forgottenpassword: If you find something while on someone else’s land, and are trespassing, it goes to the owner of the land, see the Favorite case, especially if you have to dig for it. Might want to get a waiver or something and have the landowner sign it in case in the future you do find something valuable.
@SavageATL:
now wouldn’t it be interesting if some former property owners came out of the woodwork & laid claim. or if an heir of the former owner produced documents which bequeathed the bills in question (which couldn’t be found when the estate was settled). i would imagine that could cause the bills to be reclassified as lost or mislaid.
@reasonsnotrules:
Clearly you don’t understand the treasure trove concept. Unless such a situation was planned for in the contract, contract law doesn’t apply. Read SAVAGEATL’s discussion. It’s a bit more in-depth than I was willing to go, but it’s right on. This is property law, not contract law. The contract really has little to do with it, unless it speaks to such a situation. The contract would only be relevant if the property is considered mislaid, because as an employee of the homeowner, the contractor has no rights. However, as SAVAGEATL pointed out, Treasure Trove and abandoned property typically goes to the finder. Though I do want to say that abandoned property may go to the owner of the locus in quo as well. Either way, this is property law, not contract. Perhaps you should understand ALL of the concepts before opening your mouth.
@mac-phisto:
The prior property owner would have to prove they knew it was there, and forgot about it. Might be a bit tough since it was buried in the walls. Interesting idea though.
@forgottenpassword: You, sir, astound me. You have no rights to anything you find on my property unless I allow you those rights. Admitting that you will steal half of anything you find reveals your true character – and yes, it would be THEFT for you to take half of it. Period.
You say you have an owner’s permission to search in his yard? You’d better have him sign an agreement, in writing, that you can keep half of what you find. Otherwise, if you keep anything without his permission, whether you had permission to be on his property or not, you are, indeed, a thief, and guilty of theft, and should go to jail for such – and given your attitudes on this subject, I expect you eventually will.
Retard arguments for the win…
If the law doesn’t work for me here, surely it could work somewhere else.
I’m happy everyone is arguing the whole “is it legal” thing… but it saddens me that I am apparently the only one here to RTFA…
It clearly says they found $182,000, not $2.7million.
The 2.7million figure comes in later (at the end of the article) when they adjust for inflation.
My question is what is with the sensationalist, false headline? Someone obviously didn’t read the article since it says $182,000 within the first few lines, and 2.7million all the way at the end.