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State court rules against honest man: Lodger found $14,200 in Searcy hotel room
By Tim Bousquet
The Daily Citizen
Thursday, November 4, 2004 12:43 AM CST
Finders keepers, losers weepers, goes the old children's rhyme. But for Alex Franks it's finders weepers: The Arkansas Appellate Court ruled Wednesday that he can't keep $14,200 he found in his Searcy hotel room.
A construction worker living in Mountain View, Franks checked into the Comfort Inn in Searcy on Sept. 10, 2001 while he was working on a local highway project. Terrorist attacks brought much of the world to a stop the next day, but Franks toiled on, finishing his job and checking out on Sept. 12.
He later realized that he had left some laundry at the hotel and returned to his room to retrieve it, said his lawyer, Herby Branscum of Perryville. The room had already been cleaned, but apparently not very thoroughly.
"He got his laundry, and decided he better check around to see if he left anything else," said Branscum. "He opened up the dresser drawer, and there it was."
"It" was two bundles of money. One contained 46 $100 bills all facing the same direction and wrapped with masking tape. The other contained 480 twenty-dollar bills, similarly all facing the same direction and wrapped with masking tape. The two bundles were then wrapped together with more tape, "like a brick," according to court documents.
A lesser man may have just taken the money and paid off the truck, or taken a vacation, and that would be the end of it. But Franks called his father, who called Branscum, an old family friend.
"I advised Alex to talk to the hotel manager and call the police," said Branscum.
The Searcy Police Department took the money and held it in trust. Speculation at the time was that the money was somehow related to drug dealers, but the truth may never be known - notices placed in newspapers went unanswered.
Franks subsequently filed a claim for the money, arguing that the law basically says "finders keepers."
Worried that it was opening itself up to a lawsuit, the police department instead counter-sued, saying that the department itself had some claim to the money, and that hotel owners J.K. and Seddika Kazi of Jonesboro should be brought into the matter.
The Kazis joined in the lawsuit, which was enough for the police department to drop its claim.
Circuit Court Judge Bill Mills found in the Kazis' favor, but Franks appealed. The appellate court found Wednesday that Mills had ruled correctly, and unless Branscum appeals up to the state supreme court, the Kazis will get the money.
The Kazis sold the Comfort Inn before the case came to trial, said Branscum. The hotel is now operated by the Best Western chain.
The appellate court decision is a legal scholar's fantasy, parsing the difference between "abandoned property," "lost property," "mislaid property," and "a treasure trove," each of which has a specific legal definition and specific sets of rights accorded to its finder.
The court summarized its ruling by noting that "because the money was intentionally placed in the drawer, it had not been abandoned (voluntarily forsaken by the owner) or lost (through neglect, carelessness, or inadvertence):
"[Mills'] reasoning is consistent with the principle that the place where money or property is found is an important factor in determining whether it was lost or mislaid. To reason by analogy, if one leaves a wallet in a drawer, there is no greater reason to believe it was lost rather than intentionally placed there and forgotten. Similarly, here, as [Mills] found, the fact that the money was placed in the drawer supports a finding that the property was not abandoned or lost, but was mislaid."
Therefore, ergo, hence, tough luck Alex Franks.
Judge Wendell Griffen wrote the decision, and Judges Stroud, Robbins and Vaught, agreed.
But Judge Karen Baker wrote a scathing dissent, noting that, using Griffen's logic, "someone meticulously wrapped 46 one-hundred dollar bills all facing the same direction into one bundle, and meticulously wrapped 480 twenty-dollar bills all facing the same direction into another bundle, then wrapped the two bundles into a block the size of a brick using masking tape, intentionally placed the $14,200 block of money into a drawer in a public motel room, planning to later reclaim it, and then somehow forgot where he put it.
"I cannot agree with the majority that leaving a wallet in a drawer is in any way analogous to leaving a $14,200 block of cash in the same drawer," Baker continued. "Unless those in the majority customarily travel with significantly larger amounts of cash in their wallets than I, there is no validity in the comparison."
Baker's dissent makes for good reading, but it doesn't help Franks any.
Doesn't the ruling encourage people to simply take any money they find without reporting it to police?
"He did the legal, prudent thing," Branscum said of the hapless Franks. "Whether anyone else will, I don't know."
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