It was bound to happen, eh?Seems some moron threw out his coffee cup without rolling up the rim. D'oh!
(* For you non-Canadians, Tim Horton's is a coffee house chain that has a contest where you roll up the paper rim to find a potential prize underneath)
So some 10-year old girl comes along and picks it out of the trash, enlists the help of her 12-year old friend and together they discover that the cup is a winner...of a new SUV.
The original owner, with significantly less hair now one imagines, files a lawsuit claiming that the cup is his even though he threw it out. He wants DNA tests done on the cup.
You can imagine that people accidentally throw out their unrolled cups all the time. And if they remember later on, they'll always wonder "what if...", but when does the cup cease to be theirs (if ever)? Does the guy forfeit ownership once he throws it in the trash?
What if he came back within a minute? Or ten seconds? Or what if the girl caught it in mid-air before it even hit the trash? When does his cup become her cup?
Is the winner the person who buys the cup or the person who rolls the rim?
Does someone need to be the "bigger person" in this scenario and just say "oh well, the SUV was free anyways", or offer to split the cash value?
Where's Solomon when you need him?
"A person does not seek luck; luck seeks the person"
-Turkish proverb
1 comment:
If the person throws it out and walks away then he gave it up. You don't need Solomon for that. That person is fully responsible for his decision. If he walks away and leaves it in the public trash, that is a decision and he must take responsibility for that. The Law always gives full weight to possession all other things being equal.
same thing for people waiting for empty pop bottles in Asia or anything else. If the person throws it away and walkway it's fair game and in the public arena.
Same as salvage as sea, if you abandon ship , it is fair salvage.
anyway autos are no good for people, they should cash it in and get a lifetime TTC pass. The guy who drank the original coffee is just a weasel and should get 30 days in jail just for trying to make a bogus claim like that. He walked away, end of story.
Suppose you ditch your girlfriend , you can't come back 10 minutes later when she found a Horton's winning coffee cup and say "Hey I didn't mean it". You live by what you do.
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