Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

62 Me. 275

Lawrence v. Buck

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided July 1, 1874

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1874-07-01

On report. Beplevxn of a chain cable, to which both parties claimed the title by having found it in the Kennebec river, near the dam, in July, 1870. When the plaintiffs discovered it, the chain lay coiled up in a little pile near a place which is dry when the dam is out, as it then was, the end of the cable running off toward the dam, in water about a foot or eighteen inches deep.

Cited in Bouvier (1914)’s definition of “Finder”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1874-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 2007

1 district · 4 state decisions

1018741880189019001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Danforth, J.

¶1This action is replevin of a chain cable which tire evidence shows to have been lost by the original owners. Such property belongs to the first finder as against all persons but the loser. The testimony in this case clearly shows that the defendants were the first finders, and (if it were necessary) that, before the finding of the plaintiffs, they had taken possession by such acts of ownership as the nature and condition of the property, under the circumstances, allowed; and further, that from the first they had no intention to abandon. It further appears that the first complete possession by entire removal from the place .where the property was found was in the defendants.

¶2There is no testimony in the case upon which to base a judgment for damages occasioned by its detention, and only nominal damages can be awarded, and an order that the cable be restored .to the defendants. Judgment for a return.

Appleton, C. J., Cutting, Dickerson, Barrows and Yirgin, .'JJ., concurred.
/62/me/275 · .json · Public domain