b322da wrote:txglock21 wrote:Interesting...If a person buys anything in good faith that later turns out to be stolen, is the person who bought it in good faith just out of luck?
Indeed an interesting question, txglock, one which has bothered and frustrated many individuals and judicial systems around the world for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
If one starts by recognizing that a thief gains no title to stolen goods, then it of course follows that he cannot pass title to another, either by sale or gift. That is, he cannot pass on to another something which he does not have, nor can one receiving the stolen goods from him, even if someone in what might be a lengthy chain is a good faith purchaser who exercised due diligence before the purchase.
Is this fair to the good faith purchaser? That is the rub. Many theories have been kicked around, invented and implemented, in order to avoid unfair results for both the good faith purchaser and, as well, the victim of the theft. A quick black and white answer to this question will generally result in unfair treatment of one of those two parties.
My favorite article looking at this question was published in 2011.
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/ ... fss_papers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Jim
Something like this happened to my brother back in California, with a fairly unique customized guitar in a case that he built for it, which was stolen from him some years ago - along with a bunch of amplifiers, a PA system, and other band equipment - from his practice facility in South Pasadena. He was young at the time and had no insurance on any of it, so there was no payout. He started scouting big music stores in Hollywood to see if any of it had turned up, fenced to the stores, knowing that some of these stores bought and sold used as well as new equipment. He actually found a couple of his amps and the PA system for sale in one of the stores (they bore the band's stencil on them), and with the PD's help was able to get them back. The store - not wanting any truck with the consequences of buying stolen goods - was cooperative. When he asked if they had seen his guitar, the person he spoke with said that yes, it had come through the store, but had been sold to a British tourist just two days before who was returning to London the next day, and it was long gone. So my bro resigned himself to trying to find another example of this same model of guitar, and building it back up to what he had lost.
Several weeks later, he ran across an ad for the same model of guitar, being sold by a private party in Silverlake. He called and made an appointment expressing his interest. When he got to the house, an older woman invited him in and said her son was selling the guitar and that he had run down the street to the corner store, but would be right back. My bro asked if he could see the guitar while waiting, and when they walked into the bedroom where the guitar was, there was HIS custom-made guitar case when he had built with his own hands, laying on the bed, and his guitar on a stand next to it. When the guy got back, my brother told him that he definitely wanted the guitar, but that he only had $100 on him, and asked the guy if he could give that money as a deposit to hold it, while he went to the bank for the rest, in exchange for a signed receipt from the seller for the deposit. The seller was asking something like $250 for it (it was worth 10X that, and the guy just didn't understand what he had). The guy said yes. The first thing my brother did was call the South Pasadena detective who was working the case. Together, my brother and the detective went back to the guy's house, and the detective explained the situation to him, and asked him if he had a bill of sale from the music store, which he was able to produce. He had paid for it exactly what he was asking for it. The detective offered him a choice. He could A) take my brother's $100 as full payment and my brother leaves with the guitar, or B) he gets nothing, my brother gets his deposit back because it is stolen merchandise, and the detective impounds the guitar as evidence for trial, after which my brother gets it back. The guy chose wisely. He got to recoup $100 of the $250 he had spent on stolen merchandise, and my brother got his valuable guitar back for only $100.
There was a caveat, and that was that the seller had to identify to the police the music store employee who had sold him the guitar in the first place, which he did. My bro and the cop went back to the music store only to find that that employee was no longer working there and had left to start up his own rehearsal studio business. Turns out, that employee had not only sold the stolen equipment, but he was the one who had bought it from the thief for the store inventory. They went and found him at his new studio and confronted him with the facts. Turns out it was the same guy that told my brother that the guitar had been sold to a British tourist and had left the country. The cop told the guy he would see to it that the guy never got his business license in LA County unless he gave up the person who had sold him all the stolen equipment. He did. Long story short, they caught that guy and put his butt in prison, and recovered a couple of things he hadn't fenced yet, and my brother got everything back except for a couple of minor items like cables or a microphone.
The reason I told the entire story is that the cop gave the person who was unknowingly selling stolen goods a chance to minimize his loss by taking my brother's deposit as payment in full. My brother was so grateful to be able to recover a cherished guitar, that losing the deposit was small potatoes compared to the value of recovering that guitar. He would have recovered it anyway IF the thief had been caught and convicted, but without the seller's cooperation, there might not have been any arrest or trial, and that guitar would have languished in a police impound until they decided to auction it off. So $100 was small price to pay. It strikes me that the investigating officer did a good thing. Substitute the word "gun" for the word "guitar" in the above story, and it is still a good thing.
As to waiting 20 years to run a serial number? Hey, if you had doubts of legitimacy, why did you buy it? Over the years, I've only ever bought one
used gun from an FFL — my PM9. The other used purchases have all been FTF transactions. In those cases, the seller was either the original owner, or had bought the gun from the original owner, and I trusted the seller's integrity in the matter. With the PM9, it was purchased from a pawn shop, and I
assume that an
intelligent pawnshop owner will not take a customer's firearm into inventory without first running the serial# himself to make sure that it isn't stolen. Pawnshop owners are held to a pretty high standard in that regard, not just professionally, but legally.