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Metalworking (rec.crafts.metalworking) Discuss various aspects of working with metal, such as machining, welding, metal joining, screwing, casting, hardening/tempering, blacksmithing/forging, spinning and hammer work, sheet metal work. |
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Legal question
Ignoramus3242 wrote:
Suppose that you receive a parcel that you never expected. For example a crotch rocket motorcycle engine. There is no return address. All reasonable efforts to find the owner fail. No one contacts me in, say, 2 weeks. Does this item become my property? Would it be legal to throw it away in garbage? Would it be legal to sell it on ebay? Is there a registry of stolen motorcycle engines? What if I sell it and a month later, an owner materializes. Do I owe anything to the owner. I am very leery of the idea of selling this motor on ebay. It looks like plenty of stolen motorcycle stuff is sold there and I, with the lame story of fedex leaving it in my driveway, would look like a thief. If I do not mention that story at all, then people would ask all kinds of pointed questions like "how did you end up with this engine if you do not know anything about it". i I presume from your posts on this thread that it wasn't a hypothetical question and this has actually happened to you. If it were me, I'd just take it to the local police station, tell them what happened and get a receipt for it from them. That's what SWMBO did some years ago when she found a lady's wallet outside of a shoe store with a couple of hundred bucks of cash in it and no identification. The police told her that if no one claimed it in a year they'd contact her and it would be hers to keep. I skeptically told her "Fat chance of that happening, some cop's sister-in-law will surely claim it before that happens." I was wrong. About a year later the police called her up and said, "Come get it." And all the money was still in it. Things may be different where you live, but I personally think it's better to live by the sign I have on my office wall reading, "There is no right way to do the wrong thing.". Jeff P.S. A couple of years ago UPS rang my doorbell and asked to drop off a carton addressed to the house next door, to which I agreed. The neighbor's house had been unoccupied and on the market for over a year and the name the package was addressed to wasn't that of my departed neighbors TThe return address was a sporting goods store half way across the country. I figured some teen-agers were using swiped credit card numbers to buy stuff and have it shipped to houses they knew weren't being lived in, hoping UPS would leave the packages at the door so they could swing by at night and grab them. I hooked a call to my ex-neighbors and got their permission to get involved. I called the company who'd shipped the carton and found out my suspicions were spot on, and that there was a few hundred bucks worth of paintball gear in that carton. I told them I'd take it to our office and they could have UPS issue a "pull tag" and pick it up from there, which they did. I spotted two more shipments from two other merchants sitting on the neighbor's doorstep and did the same with those. JW -- Jeffry Wisnia (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE) "Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented." |
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