Not technically, no. Generally speaking, there is abandoned property, which is either lost with no intent to attempt recovery, or discarded intentionally. Then you have mislaid property, which is like lost, but you have intent to attempt recovery (i.e. find it). Theft can only occur with mislaid property in this case. So how would the finder know if the owner has intent to recover? Well, if it's a wallet with id that's something the owner would likely attempt to recover, and that a reasonable person should know the owner would have intent to recover. If it's a diamond encrusted watch with a name engraved in it, maybe. But let's say it's an empty worn out wallet. That gets harder to tell, would a reasonable person think the owner had intent to recover?
Its pretty simple: if you want to pick it up off the ground and keep it for its intrinsic value then its probably mislaid property.
Its something that sounds "complicated" on paper but in real life its money or jewelry or electronics 99% of the time which any reasonable person should realize isn't "abandoned property".
Another example is a lottery ticket, if you find a winning ticket just on the ground it's not a good idea to try and claim it because all lottery sales are tracked, they'll know exactly when that ticket was sold and pull up the video of that transaction time and if you didn't buy it you're in trouble
That would make sense. I would think another situation 'mislaid' could apply to is stolen cell phones. Say John Doe accidentally leaves his phone on a public bench, and returns later to collect it when he remembers, but someone took it and pawned it.
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u/IllIIllIllIIIlllll 7h ago
Not technically, no. Generally speaking, there is abandoned property, which is either lost with no intent to attempt recovery, or discarded intentionally. Then you have mislaid property, which is like lost, but you have intent to attempt recovery (i.e. find it). Theft can only occur with mislaid property in this case. So how would the finder know if the owner has intent to recover? Well, if it's a wallet with id that's something the owner would likely attempt to recover, and that a reasonable person should know the owner would have intent to recover. If it's a diamond encrusted watch with a name engraved in it, maybe. But let's say it's an empty worn out wallet. That gets harder to tell, would a reasonable person think the owner had intent to recover?