WHO DO YOU THINK IS RITE

[joseph]

A judge has ruled in favour of an 89-year-old widow who fought to claim $130,000 her husband had buried in the backyard.

Jean Weitzner's husband died in a fire and never had a chance to tell her about the money. Weitzner eventually sold the Stratford, Ont., house.

The couple who bought the house found the money when they were tearing it down. A backhoe turned up silver coins and a fire extinguisher packed with big bills.

The judge ruled this was not a case of finders-keepers.

Judge J. McDermid quoted a legal case dating back to 1722, which said the money should go to the true owner.

He also criticized the couple who found it. At one point the widow heard they'd found $12,000 They offered the widow $4,000.

McDermid says these actions highlight the couple's greed and mendacity and ordered them to give Weitzner the full $130,000.

 

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[Gypsy Heart]

I think that if the property owner was forced to give it up,they should have been able to keep half. Another reason why they should have kept their mouths shut shut shut.

 

[Montana Jim]

I think that if the property owner was forced to give it up,they should have been able to keep half. Another reason why they should have kept their mouths shut shut shut.

I AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[The Beep Goes On]

Yep, once they spilled the beans, they deserved whatever happened to them. Since they were dumb, I'm glad the widow got it.

HH!
TBGO

 

[aa battery]

 

[WV Hillbilly]

If I was stupid enough to find myself in that position I think I would file an appeal to the judge's ruling . It seems to me once the lady sold the property whatever was there should belong to the new owner . I know that when I've sold property I signed away all interest I had in it .

 

[Ben_banned]

Its the property owners but their stupid for opening their mouths.
Rite=Right

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

<<The couple who bought the house >>

Land and all it contains goes with the house unless they didn't get the mineral rights (if that state has that).

I'd rule with the new owners. What if they found the septic system was cracked and leaking, would the widow have paid to exhume the poo and make it right?

 

[stoney56]

Loose lips can be expensive. To quote a paragraph of Karl Von Muellers #6 Treasure Hunters Manual...

"Generally speaking, if you dig up or find buried or hidden treasure anywhere of which no one else was aware, it is yours. For example, if you go out to Tom Jones' ranch and dig up $100,000 in gold coin, and if he was not aware that it was there, and if nobody can prove that they lost it there, it is legally yours. But, let a word of your remarkable discovery appear in the newspapers and you will find that Brother Jones will lay claim to the entire amount and legally impound it until the case is settled. With an amount of this size, you can be pretty certain that at least 6 other persons will file suits claiming they hid it. So, when the entire matter is over, 10 or 15 years from now, you will find that your original $100,000 has dwindled to maybe $6,000 or $8,000. Lawyers, court costs, and other expenses will have eaten up the rest of the money. Mind you, $100,000 at 6% simple interest for 10 years should have grown to at least $160,000, but you will come out with less than $10,000, if you are lucky. Note well, if you have not already spotted the fact, that nothing has been said about income taxes. Actually, they come right off of the top, so you can very well finish the last day in court with a hundred-dollar bill in your pocket, and lucky to get even that.
"

 

[txkickergirl]

they should never of said a word! I know I wouldn't, but just because she was old and probably on a fixed income I would took a chunk of it and made sure she got it without knowing who or where it came from.

 

[LJ]

I'm split on this one. I realize when you purchase a home...whatever is there......I realize this.

What has my heart is the fact that the original post said he died in a fire and didn't have a chance to tell the old widow about the money. Did the fire occur right after he made his stash??

I realize when you purchase a home...whatever is there......I realize this.

Sad story for both sides....

 

[Pulltab Parson]

I would have to agree with txkickergirl, I wouldn't say anything. I would take a sizable amount and have it mysteriously arrive on her doorstep. This will avoid all the court thieves and allow her to have a share that would potentially be larger than what she would have received if the case went to court.

 

[kieser sousa/rip]

I'm split on this one. I realize when you purchase a home...whatever is there......I realize this.

What has my heart is the fact that the original post said he died in a fire and didn't have a chance to tell the old widow about the money. Did the fire occur right after he made his stash??

I realize when you purchase a home...whatever is there......I realize this.

Sad story for both sides....

What the lovely lady said !

 

[Gypsy Heart]

I dont think we should look at this as a poor old widow.....evidently she was pretty well off. Her husband and her had operated a scrap metal business for years and she sold off the properties and business's.

I think its pretty weird that the lawyers had to dig up an ancient law from the 1700's in order to win

The property was sold in 1997......and if he buried that money...he should have trusted her enough to tell her immediately....unless he didnt intend to.


heres an article ......http://www.propertyshop.ca/articles.cfm?action=show&articleid=324
It's a common misconception that the old adage "finders keepers, losers weepers" is the law of Canada. In most cases, however, that's actually not the rule our courts follow, as a builder in Stratford, Ont., found out.

The story takes place at 16 Jarvis St., in Stratford, where Jean and Harry Weitzner lived together for 38 years prior to Harry's tragic death in a fire in 1989. Harry left a will naming his wife as his sole heir.

For about 30 years, Harry operated a scrapyard on the site, using a portion of his home as a business office.

After she became a widow, Jean continued to live in the house until 1995, when she moved into a senior's apartment at the age of 85. Two years later, in June of 1997, she sold the property to Wilbert Herman and his wife, Jean.

In July 1997, the Hermans hired Cornelius Gansevles to demolish the house. Wilbert was on site when the demolition began. During the levelling of the house, a fire extinguisher rolled out of a crawl space under the business office in the home. An unspecified quantity of silver coins was found in the extinguisher, along with $130,000 in old $50 and $100 bills. The money was in 26 neat bundles of $5,000 each.

Many of the bills were stuck together and smelled of mildew. They bore different dates starting in 1954, but were all dated before Harry's death in 1989.

Neither Jean nor the Hermans knew about the hidden money when they signed the agreement of purchase and sale.

The Hermans tried to keep the find quiet but didn't count on 89-year-old Jean Weitzner going to the local beauty salon, apparently the clearinghouse for local gossip.

Shortly after the demolition, the Hermans visited Jean Weitzner, ostensibly to return some photographs they found in the house.

During the visit, Jean told the Hermans that she heard they found $12,000 on the property during the demolition. Wilbert Herman admitted that he found that much "and a little more" but he had to share it with the contractor. Someone suggested they split it three ways with themselves and the contractor getting $4,000 each.

The Hermans returned later with a cheque for $4,000 payable to Jean Weitzner and got her to sign an agreement accepting the cheque in full payment "for any money found in or around the house."

The document also said that Jean didn't know the money was in the house, and that the Hermans "may keep any amount they have found."

No one bothered to tell Jean before she signed the agreement that the buyer had actually found $130,000, not $12,000. It's not clear how Jean found out the truth, but there was an independent witness present when the old extinguisher rolled out of the crawlspace. In another incident, Wilbert Herman sued Cornelius Gansevles, the contractor, for $2,000 interest on a loan that had been partially paid off, and the cat may have come out of the bag during the Small Claims Court proceedings.

In any event, it wasn't long before everybody was suing everybody else in Superior Court, all of them claiming to be entitled to the money.

Jean claimed she inherited the money from her husband even though she didn't know about it, and the deed to the house was never meant to pass title to the cash.

Gansevles, the contractor, claimed salvage rights. The Hermans argued that Jean abandoned the contents along with the house, and transferred the money to them by delivering, on closing, a signed Bill of Sale for the moveable items in the house.

The Hermans argued "finders keepers," an old rule applying to chattels, or items of personal property not attached to land or a building. The finders keepers rule, they said, goes back to an old English court case in 1722. The ancient principle of law that covers the situation is that the finder of a lost chattel acquires good title to it as against everyone but the true owner or someone enjoying a better claim, or a superior title. As with most legal rules, however, there are always exceptions. This case was one of the exceptions.

Justice Dougald McDermid ruled that Jean could recover the full $130,000 from Wilbert and Jean Dalton, minus the $4,000 she got when she signed the release. That document was worthless, and the Hermans did not even bother to argue in court that it was valid.

In his judgment, Justice McDermid decided that there was no agreement that ownership of the money was transferred along with the deed to the house or the bill of sale for the contents. He also tossed out the claim for salvage rights. He ruled that even though the Hermans contracted to buy the house "as is," that did not mean the money in the fire extinguisher came with title to the land.

The judge said it was absurd to believe that someone could buy a property for $163,500 and retain $130,000 in cash inside it at the same time.

After hearing testimony from the former bookkeeper of Harry's scrap metal business, the judge even went out of his way to declare that Harry had always properly reported cash receipts to his accountants just in case, I suppose, anyone in Ottawa wanted to invoke their own salvage rights.

The next time someone says that the finders-keepers rule still applies, it might be worthwhile recalling the story about Jean Weitzner and the mildewed cash. A better statement of the rule might be that possession is nine-tenths of the law. In this case, Jean Weitzner's one-tenth rights carried the day.

I wonder what happened to the fire extinguisher.

 

[Montana Jim]

What has my heart is the fact that the original post said he died in a fire and didn't have a chance to tell the old widow about the money.  Did the fire occur right after he made his stash?? 

Someplace in there you are putting yourself in their shoes, or the ole' lady's shoes... and feeling a little torn, perfectly human response.  I however must submit that the Ole' man didn't want Granny to know about it or he would have shared that fact with her!  My wife and I agree that if he wanted her to have it, he would never have hidden it or would have told her about it.  I think he was greedy and did his own thing, keeping it from her.  At least thats what I would tell myself whist sneaking it away under the cover of secrecy!  
NOTE: Which now I understand, was never a secret in the first place.
I wrote the above before reading Gypsy's posting... which was very well done.

 

[OldBillinUT]

A similar case as the Tom Jones example did happen in Idaho, An employee of a contractor who was doing some excavation work on property owned by the owner of rolling stone magazine discovered a jar of gold coins dating from the 1850s while digging. The employee needed a loan of 14k from his boss and offered the jar of coins as collateral. When repayment was to be made the contractor refused to return the coins declaring the debt satisfied with them. It went to court and the judge awarded the coins to the property owner. The contractor and his employee received nothing.

 

[TreasureTales]

Even the modern stuff we dig up is TECHNICALLY not ours because it was merely lost and not abandoned. Luckily for us, most of it is not unusual enough to be clearly identified by the true owner. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to give up anything I find unless I want to, but I know better than to talk about, or show around, some of the more unique things I've dug up. Shovel, scoop, and shut up should be every treasure hunter's mantra.

I feel a little sorry for the old lady, doesn't matter how much money she made on the sales of her businesses and properties. What is sad, IMO, is that her old man held out on her. But maybe he had some good reason for doing so...like she spent every penny he made or something. Who knows?

 

[treasurejack]

I guess in a legal argument my question would have been this; If Jean didn't know about the money then how can the court be certain that her husband did? We don't know for sure where the item in question even came from? Hence, in order to reclaim ownership I would think that you'd have to prove you were in fact, "the original owner" to begin with.

However, in a moral argument, there never would have been a lawsuit.

 

[halfdime]

It is reasonable to assume, given the dates on the bills, that the husband knew about the money, given the details on how long they lived there, etc. I agree that the new owners of the house should have been declared the new owners of the cash as well, and they were generous to even offer Jean some of it.

 

[The Beep Goes On]

I guess the moral of the story is...If you're doing demolition, do it without anyone around.

HH!
TBGO