Any person who shall take, drive or use any animal, aircraft, vehicle, boat or vessel, not his own, without the consent of the owner thereof and in the absence of the owner, and with intent temporarily to deprive the owner thereof of his possession thereof, without intent to steal the same, shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony, provided, however, that if the value of such animal, aircraft, vehicle, boat or vessel shall be less than $1,000, such person shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. The consent of the owner of an animal, aircraft, vehicle, boat or vessel to its taking, driving or using shall not in any case be presumed or implied because of such owner's consent on a previous occasion to the taking, driving or using of such animal, aircraft, vehicle, boat or vessel by the same or a different person. Any person who assists in, or is a party or accessory to, or an accomplice in, any such unauthorized taking, driving or using shall be subject to the same punishment as if he were the principal offender.
Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-102
Unauthorized use of animal, aircraft, vehicle or boat; consent; accessories or accomplices
Applied in 8 court decisions — leading case 4 Va. App. 433 - Mounce v. Commonwealth (1987)
Most recently applied in 261 F. Supp. 3d 579 - Corcoran v. Sessions (August 2017)
Code 1950, § 18.1-164; 1960, c. 358; 1970, c. 8; 1975, cc. 14, 15; 1981, c. 197; 2018, cc. 764, 765; 2020, cc. 89, 401.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Virginia Law Portal (LIS). Reproduced from public-domain Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.