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A Case of
Tories, Treasure, and
Trespass
When does
"finders keepers, losers weepers" not apply?
 In
1978, a case concerning a pre-Revolutionary statue of King George
III found its way to the Connecticut Supreme Court. Back in 1776,
patriots celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence
demolished the King’s statue where it stood in lower Manhattan. The
patriots’ plan was to deliver the statue pieces to Oliver Wolcott’s
foundry in Litchfield. There the gilded lead pieces would be made
into bullets. Enroute, the patriot group stopped in Wilton, and
while they were busy drinking, loyalists managed to steal back
pieces of the statue and scattered them throughout an area known as
Davis Swamp.
There the pieces
remained until 1972 when Louis Miller, armed
with information from the Wilton Historical Society, entered onto
land owned by Fred S. Favorite. Using a metal detector, Miller found
a piece of the statue buried ten inches below the ground. When
Favorite sued Miller for return of the statue fragment, the trial
court focused on the issue of whether the statue piece was property
that had been lost, abandoned, or mislaid. The trial court found the
piece to be mislaid property and ruled that, under the law, it
should be returned to the landowner Favorite.
On appeal, the
defendant Miller characterized himself as a "selfless seeker after
knowledge" and argued that as a "finder" he was entitled to keep the
statue piece. The Connecticut Supreme Court was not persuaded by
Miller’s arguments. The Court noted that Miller was not claiming the
statue to be "treasure trove" and ruled that Miller’s trespass
defeated any claim to the property that he might have had as a
finder.
See: Favorite v.
Miller, 176 Conn. 310 (1978)
Dose
of Connecticut Legal History
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