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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

Question: someone steals your car and you go to take it back. When you drive off with it, the thief's backpack/laptop/etc. are in the back seat. Can you now be prosecuted for theft? Obviously most people wouldn't want to hang around long enough to fully inspect the vehicle to make sure they're not taking anything that doesn't belong to them!

My inkling, as a former lawyer, is that this would not be theft if you didn't know the item was there. Crimes require a certain mental state, and theft typically requires that you be aware that you're taking a thing that doesn't belong to you. If you leave a restaurant and unknowingly take someone else's umbrella from the bin instead of your own, you cannot be found guilty of theft.

If you do know the items are there, you could be found guilty. Of course, the practical reality is that you don't want to give a criminal any reason to come back to your house, hunting for his belongings.

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IANAL either but the mens rea doesn't exist, right. There's also another angle: if I opened up your car and tossed my backpack in knowing it's a random stranger's car that might not be there when I get back, I have abandoned my property and have no claim against the car's owner. (It's more complicated with an honest mistake, though.)

I would imagine that legally speaking that it is no different than the situation an Uber driver faces when someone leaves their backpack/laptop/etc. in their car.

> My inkling, as a former lawyer, is that this would not be theft if you didn't know the item was there

Not theft, but still conversion. The thief could sue you for the value of the items. When a car is repossessed the chattels (personal items) have to be returned to avoid liability. There is case law establishing that if you tell the repo agent you have stuff in the trunk and he drives off anyway, that's prima facie conversion (monetary liability) regardless of whether they try to return the items later.

This is not a repossession situation, so it is not obvious that the law is the same as it is with repossession.

Isn’t it literally repossessed when you steal back your car.

Not in the sense nwiswell is using the term, where the issue is the legal obligations that surround the case of repossession in response to loan default. Context matters.

Even more to the point, driving your own car is not stealing it, either.

I hadn't considered conversion, but it looks like under some statutes this still requires knowledge and/or intent. [1] It also appears that the 'unclean hands' doctrine could be invoked as a defense, and a thief who seeks return of his laptop that he stashed in your car that he stole would most certainly have unclean hands!

There is one wrinkle in the intent issue, which is that you may not have had intent to take the item when you drove off, but if you later discover it and didn't give it back, you might form the requisite intent at that time. All in all, this sounds like a good law school exam question!

1: https://california-business-lawyer-corporate-lawyer.com/cali...

Is there a citation for that case law?

It seems extremely unlikely that the simple repossession of a car with personal property is conversion given that roughly 100% of all repos will have at least some personal property within.

It’s clear they are obligated to return it to you, but your argument here doesn’t sound right.

I'm sure if a DA tried to pull this, a grand jury or judge would no bill this.

Personally, if found stuff that wasn't mine, it'd get pitched to a dumpster.

> When you drive off with it, the thief's backpack/laptop/etc. are in the back seat.

Or even much worse, and you get blamed for the item and go to prison.

The definition of theft is to take something with the intent to not return it.

Once you found the backpack, you would have to return it to the thief for it not to be theft.

Hopefully you wouldn't get prosecuted, but you are then at the whim of the prosecutor. If the thief calls it in you've created a bad situation. I was in jail and saw weird crimes like this. A guy bought some dope for $40 from a dealer, but only handed him $20 and ran off with the dope. The dealer called 911 and reported the stolen merch. The buyer was in jail with me. WTF.

What is WTF about the story?

That they called 911 over $20 in an illegal transaction?

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