First of all, I often – but not always! – find these matters delightfully clear-cut, once I have all the details.
They’re also attractive to me for other reasons. They are matters of people acting, sometimes in bad faith, sometimes in good faith. They involve communications or the lack thereof, misunderstandings and assumptions.
They are matters that can happen to anyone. Rich or poor, black or white, straight or any other variation of private inclinations, British or foreign, blond or brunette, Tory fan or UKIP voter, company or private citizen, loyal to Labour or to LibDem, thief or saint, old or young. It does not matter who you are.
Anyone’s stuff can get stolen, lost, destroyed, vandalised, misplaced, delivered to the wrong address, sent to the wrong address, left behind in a pub and then found by someone else or otherwise interfered with in a manner that does not make you – the rightful owner – a happy bunny.
What these cases all require is sufficient evidence. There is the inevitable “he says she says he says” component in these cases. Those arguments can certainly make a difference, but evidence plays a key role. Evidence can sometimes still be found even when people think they have none, however. What’s worse, people may even automatically assume they have no rights or options in these matters!
The cases I like tackling are about “stuff” that it not attached to mother earth. So it’s not about cottages and sky scrapers themselves, but about what happens to the stuff in and around them. This used to be only tangible stuff, but there is a progression going on into other forms of stuff such as intellectual property rights and digital “stuff”.
It may not surprise you that these cases often have some overlap with other areas of law. They can be the result of a wrongful eviction, for example, or of a rightful eviction, of a mistake made by an online store, of being fired from your job. They can also have human rights aspects.
Trespass to land – which is not a crime as opposed to what many people think – can be involved as well. I tend to stay away from any form of interference with people, though, because I strongly feel that that is a specialism in its own right and such matters are often of a very different nature. They are sometimes heinous crimes, in fact.
Twice in my life, I lost everything that I owned, although it happened in three steps. That third event got to me because along with a lot of junk that did’t matter I lost a few things that were dear to me. Things that I cherished. So I know how that feels like, I also know about the relief of letting stuff go, of no longer having it burden you. Sometimes, other people destroy something that they know matters to you just to hurt you. I am familiar with that too.
Filed under: Goods and properties, Legal musings Tagged: abandoned goods, bailment, chattels, conversion, found goods, interference with goods, lost goods, personal stuff, possessions, properties, stolen goods, stuff, theft, trespass to goods, trespass to land, wrongful destruction, wrongful interference with goods
