Vickipedia

FINDER OF GOODS. The finder acquires a special property in goods, which is available to him against all the world except the true owner; but before appropriating them to his own use, he must use every reasonable means to discover the owner. It has been decided that if the property had not been designedly abandoned, and the finder knew who the owner was, or knew that he could have discovered him, he was guilty of larceny in keeping and appropriating the articles to his own use. R. v. Thurborn, 1 Denison c.c. 393; Merry v. Green, 7 M. and W. 623. In the latter case, in which a person purchased, at a public auction, a bureau, in which he afterwards discovered, in a secret drawer, a purse containing money, which he appropriated to his own use, Mr. Baron Parke thus laid down the law. ‘The old rule, that “if one lose his goods, and another find them, though he convert them animo furandi to his own use, it is no larceny,” has undergone in more recent times some limitations. One is, that if the finder knows who the owner of the lost chattel is, or if, from any mark upon it, or the circumstances under which it is found, the owner could be reasonably ascertained, then the fraudulent conversion, animo furandi, constitutes a larceny.’ This law, however, although in most cases clear, is, in others, extremely difficult in application, and judges and juries often go wrong. The question for the jury is not whether they think the finder could have discovered the owner, but whether he believed that he could; and if not satisfied as to this, they cannot convict him of larceny. It is a mistake to suppose that the finder is bound to advertise, or use extraordinary means to discover the owner; indeed he cannot claim such expenses from the real owner, if he appear.