Wouldn't that be the same legal reason you can't just take any scooter off the street and keep it in your house?
[Downvoters: I'm not saying that I think I should be able to grab a Bird off the street, I just want to hear the legal explanation of how this works.]
https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/abandoned-per...
Property owners don't have any legal responsibility not to leave an item in public unlocked. That might be careless, but it's not illegal.
If Bird leaves a scooter in the road, for someone else to use, they have relinquished the right to control the device, and it is thus abandoned; the alternative is that they are deliberately littering or committing various other property infractions or misdemeanors.
No, if they are charging use fees, offering money for people to choose charge them, etc., they have not relinquished all rights to control.
> the alternative is that they are deliberately littering or committing various other property infractions or misdemeanors.
That's a big false dichotomy.
Regarding statutory violations, first of all Bird is probably not littering because the scooters are (arguably) not trash. Second, where the scooters are impounded by cities and other municipalities, it is for parking violations or other statutes against them. As a private citizen, you would have no more right to take their scooter than you would to take my car that was illegally parked.
My neighbor has a sign on the dash of his van explaining that it is in working condition, is able to be moved, and is definitely not abandoned. Obviously he got complaints from other neighbors in the past about it.
Property owners do not have any obligation to lock up their items.
There are sometimes very specific laws regarding found property when the owner cannot be located, generally these involve turning the property over to the state first.
Usually that process involves turning the property in to the government, and waiting some period of time for the original owner to claim it. If it is not claimed, it would become yours.
I don't know of any law that requires property on public space to be locked. There may be laws saying you can't leave property in public for more than a certain amount of time, but I am pretty sure none of those would allow anyone to just take the property.
In California, if you find it and choose to take charge of it, you become a depositary for the legal owner. Additionally, if it is worth $100+, and you can't locate and return it to the owner within a reasonable period, you are required to turn it into the police or sheriff depending on the jurisdiction in which it was found. It may become yours if the owner doesn't claim it from the police/sheriff within 90 days, with some additional requirements if it is worth more than $250.
If it was intentionally abandoned by the owner this doesn't apply.
EDIT: Source, Civil Code § 2080 et seq..
They clearly haven't abandoned them as that applies generally to property; if you are in fact charging rental fees, you haven't intentionally relinquished the right to control something, as you are exercising that right by charging others for the right to temporarily exercise some portion of it.
There may be rules regarding public rights of way which impact this, though the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has already rejected the claim that property left unattended on a public sidewalk is therefore abandoned and subject to deprivation when the City of Los Angeles used that as an excuse to take the goods belonging to the homeless without due process, so I think what is really going on in those DAs offices is people have made the decision “we don't like what Bird is doing so we aren't going to enforce the law when people commit crimes against them.”
In contrast, the homeless person has not left there property around for the express purpose of letting others use it.
Intending to rent it to others for use, yes.
> If they are not locally permitted to do so, then this act constitutes abandonment
No, it doesn't. It may constitute violation of whatever ordinance does not permit it, but the Lavan v. LA case is directly on point, that whatever regulatory powers local jurisdiction has, a property owner not intending to entirely relinquish control has not abandoned (and the state cannot without violating the due process clause of the 14th amendment treat them as having abandoned) property merely because it is unattended on a public way in violation of some local control. (They may have the right to take the property with due process from the person who remains, until that process has been given, the owner, but that's a remedy against the owner, not abandonment by the owner.)
While I concede that your position is correct academically, I've successfully argued my position in court several times (pro bono, since I only take on criminal def when I believe in the case), so I'm confident that my position is correct where it matters.
And if you're ever actually practiced in the California court system, you would know that you only need to convince a single appellate judge statewide to make valuable precedent. (Because in California, a lower court can follow the precedent of any higher California appellate ruling.)
On the other hand you have the ground occupied by or encumbered by said property, which is also property, owned by somebody, often the public, and likely intended for some other purpose besides storing your property. "Don't make your stuff our problem!"
Different places balance the two interests in different ways. Most provide some legal framework or mechanism by which your private property rights can become subordinate to public property rights, i.e. your property is declared abandoned, or simply seized based on a nuisance or safety argument.
Every state has regulations on the exact process by which private individuals can be deprived of their property rights due to "abandonment." Not a single one of those regulations is as straight-forward as "finders keepers."
Which is the same problem that Bird is facing--in cities where they aren't actually permitted by the appropriate authority (city, county, etc.), Birds are abandoned property. In cities where they have been granted a permit to conduct business activities, the question is more nebulous, but thus far DAs are decisively on the side of not treating it as a crime.
Is there a citation for this in CA? can you just take abandoned property and claim it as yours without a single paperwork step?
I'm not so sure scooters with GPS tracking and contractors looking for them would be considered abandoned in the eyes of the law, even if they have been left in an unpermitted location.