As the story goes, a magician was dissatisfied with the performance of his magic silk hat and discarded it. Some children found it and put it on a snowman which brought Frosty to life. The magician soon realized his mistake of throwing away his hat and pursued Frosty to get it back. Santa told the magician that the hat was no longer his.
Which begs the following question - If something is discarded, are all property rights to the discarded object permanently and immediately relinquished? (I tend to favor yes)
Some modern day examples might be:
A couple quarrels and the wife throws her ring in the trash can to make a point to her husband. Before things cool off and she can retrieve it, the garbage man empties the trash and pockets her ring lying on top.
A person misreads his lotto ticket and throws it on the counter, discouraged that he didn’t win again, the counter clerk picks it up and correctly reads it and claims the prize.
Happy holidays to all, comments, curses, and critiques welcome … [:)]
what if the lotto ticket fell out of the person’s pocket? a grayer area in terms of the perspective of the original owner. I am not sure if that is enough to really change anything, but if it was, how about if he put it in his pocket to throw away when he saw a trash can and before he saw one, it fell out.
If person A willfully gets rid of an object that they regard as useless or undesirable to them for that moment in time, does person A immediately lose all rights to that object when person B shortly thereafter claims it as person B’s even if moments later person A wants it to be person A’s again?
There would be a contract between the garbage disposal company and the individual who pays the bills at the residence to dispose of the garbage, and put it in the tip. The employee has violated that contract by not disposing of the items as required by the contract.
For eg. paper documents or something that needs to be destroyed is put in the garbage for that purpose. Then the garbage man sees them, and takes them. That’s a no-no.
Alternatively, the disposal place could have garage sales - sell of the items that people may want super cheaply at the tip. “Another mans trash, is another mans treasure”. I guess it depends whether in the contract, it states if it was for disposal or destruction.. as their is a difference to whether the company is obligated to destroy the contents, or take possession of them - for a minimal daily / weekly / monthly fee (collection fee).
A clause in the contract could contain a “retrieval fee”? For a similar scenario where something valuable actually makes it to the tip (rubbish heap).
Ultimately.. I’m sure the wife would learn her lesson not to throw valuable things in the trash - if she doesn’t ultimately want them to be taken to the tip.
Well has he abandoned it? His actions would seem to dictate the response. If he walks off and never returns nor inquires again, then I would say yes he has, and thus his fault for misreading and discarding / abandoning the lotto ticket.
If however, he misreads it and throws it on the counter, thinking he didn’t win - but he stays there, and the counter clerk picks it up, correctly reads it - I don’t think it can claimed he has abandoned / discarded the ticket. His actions could be implying that he wants her to double check it for him. As often happens. If he walks away without furthering inquiring then I recon it could be said to be abandoning it… although it would be pretty uncouth for the employer to do that and would reflect poorly on the establishment.