But, why not? Let's say a (regular) scooter or even bicycle has been sitting on the sidewalk for a couple of days. Is it illegal for me to consider it abandoned and just take it? Consider the case of an item that actually is abandoned. Don't property owners have some amount of legal responsibility to not leave an item in public unlocked? Granted, "unlocked" might be the key. You can't ride a Bird scooter without the app. But it isn't exactly locked in the same way as a bicycle.
[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.]
> Let's say a (regular) scooter or even bicycle has been sitting on the sidewalk for a couple of days. Is it illegal for me to consider it abandoned and just take it?
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.
The legal argument of course is that Bird has intentionally abandoned their scooters in the public way, and this is the general consensus of my many friends in the local DA offices. (Translation: they don't think it's a crime and they won't prosecute any such cases even if for some reason someone is ticketed or arrested for it.)
> The legal argument of course is that Bird has intentionally abandoned their scooters in the public way, and this is the general consensus of my many friends in the local DA offices. (Translation: they don't think it's a crime and they won't prosecute any such cases even if for some reason someone is ticketed or arrested for it.)
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.”
As discussed elsewhere, that case is not applicable. Bird has left their former property on the public right of way intending to others to use it. If they are not locally permitted to do so, then this act constitutes abandonment. If they are permitted to do so, prosecutors won't prosecute.
In contrast, the homeless person has not left there property around for the express purpose of letting others use it.
> As discussed elsewhere, that case is not applicable. Bird has left their former property on the public right of way intending to others to 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 the law is generally built upon extending similar cases to novel situations, you're stretching too hard here to bring in case law that is too easily distinguishable from the matter at hand.
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.)
both of those cases are permitted, ZipCar explicitly rents spaces which are marked as theirs. I'm also not sure they use public parking lots, I've only encountered them in private lots and garages.
I wonder what the FMV is of a Bird scooter. These things cost about $500 new (just guessing please feel free to correct me), and with charger. But used it would be maybe $200-$300 depending on battery and aesthetic condition, and without any warranty. And then without the charger it would be worth somewhat less. Probably still over $100, but perhaps not that much.
It depends on the jurisdiction, but a lot of places have laws around found property... often a finder would have rights to truly abandoned property, but there are usually laws in place that establish a procedure for determining if something is truly abandoned or just lost/misplaced/stolen.
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 the UK there is the crime of 'Theft by finding' [0] when you find something you think is abandoned and take it, but do not do anything to determine if it really was abandoned, as opposed to lost, unattended, etc. The Wikipedia article suggests similar offences exist elsewhere...
Yes, it is illegal for you to consider it abandoned. In the US, at least, "abandoned" has a specific legal meaning which involves intent: "Abandoned property refers to any personal property left by an owner who has intentionally relinquished all rights to its control. When property is intentionally abandoned, it belongs to no one until it is found and when it is found, the title (ownership) transfers to whoever finds it and possesses it with the intent to take ownership."
In the US, at least, what constitutes "abandoned" property differs from state to state and even within the states at the county/municipality level.
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.
Bird clearly maintains the right to control the device because it unlocks the scooter to be used by customers and causes a light to blink so it can be found by "chargers" at the end of the day.
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.
You can argue that, but you can't just go around stealing things that are sitting on the street or sidewalk. Can you take the doormat outside a door on a building? Or take a sign on the sidewalk? No. Take a sign that the city has left just screwed into a metal pole?
If its not yours, you can't take possession of it. Just because it is currently resting on a sidewalk doesn't mean that it is any less the property of someone. Besides, most cities have a formal process to determine if a vehicle really is abandoned.
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.
The point was that leaving a vehicle in a parking space is not an indicator of abandonment because ownership of a vehicle is based on registration, not physical possession. The same is not true of scooters, and that makes all the difference.
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."
On the one hand you have property rights, which some siblings of my current comment argue are inalienable concerning the scooter. "Don't touch my stuff!"
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.
I think this would be a jurisdiction-specific question. Where I live, you are not entitled to just keep found items, but should return them to lost and found instead.
Generally speaking theft requires an intent to deprive an owner of property. It's a crime to take my bike intending to deprive me of it, but it's not a crime to take my bike while attempting to return it to me.
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.
No, because if a scooter is just left lying around on the street it is abandoned property and so generally there is no law against taking it.
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.
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.
Usually after a certain time frame, for example 3 days in LA, the car is considered abandoned. Fortunately my neighbors don’t dime me for those weeks I stay in code rushing.
I don't live in LA, but surely that doesn't make the car publicly available for taking. It would be impounded or something, with the owner having to pay to retrieve it.
