$200K Found in bathroom wall - contractor wants to keep it

[jorian]

The basics:

- homeowner hires a plumber to work in her bathroom
- plumber opens wall up and finds $200K in vintage bills wrapped in a newspaper from 1949
- vintage bills valued in excess of $500K
- plumber is putting a claim on the money citing "Treasure Trove" law
- homeowner says go pound sand

I think the law is clearly on the homeowners side. She hired him, its her house and not public property.

Morally/ethically I think the plumber is entitled to at least a finders fee.

[Hard-Deck]

I'm no lawyer, but I think the law will find that it's her (homeowner's) money and she doesn't HAVE to give him any.

Ethically, I'd give him 10%

[Rikao4]

well after the Lawyers are done..she will have little $, and the plumber..will have bills.
Rika

[Superman]

In my view, this money belongs to the property owner. Ethically, a percentage goes to the finder. Practically speaking, some of this money probably belongs to the attorneys. Or will.

[Neilk]

Contractor should have kept his mouth shut if he thought it belonged to him. Although that would be stealing. I think a finder's fee of $25k would be appropriate. Someone would have found it eventually.

Wonder what the story is behind the money. The owner better keep quiet about it, lest a PO's relative try to claim that their senile grandfather "misplaced" it.

[Hard-Deck]

It's too late to keep quiet, it's all over the news.

[jorian]

Apparently the previous homeowner died without heirs.

[Dan in Pasadena]

I agree with Snapper and Superman...but its a moot point now. Ironically,m the expression "coming out of the woodwrok: applies. Not only will former owners or offspring of former owners lay a claim but invstigation may reveal the money came from an illegal source. Statute of limitations proably makes that irrelevant but by the time the lawyers get done with this? You think it WON'T be $500K in legal fees?

What a waste. Gotta go, my contractor is currently up to his elbows in my bathroom walls. Maybe he found some too? (Yeah, right)

[the]

I think all the money belongs to the homeowner. There is no "finder fee" in this instance. The plumber was instructed and paid to do a job, and in the course of doing it, found the money. So even if the plumber is the one who "found" it, he did it only as an agent of the homeowner.

[speeder]

How on earth could it be $500k in legal bills to determine who owns the money??

If it was the most expensive lawyer in New York, it could not be $500.00 to tell the dumb *****s whose $$ it is. It would be a one word answer. I'll tell you for free:

It's the home owner.

How could a plumber own anything that is in your house?? Some of your fear/phobia of the legal profession really borders on the insane. But it's amusing, none-the-less.

[M.D. Holloway]

if its money from the 1940's it ain't worth as much due to inflation but back then that much cash must have been from a serious crime!

[Neilk]

From the AP

Contractor, Owner Feud Over Hidden Cash

1 day ago

CLEVELAND (AP) — A contractor who helped discover bundles of Depression-era U.S. currency totaling $182,000 hidden behind bathroom walls said the homeowner should turn the money over to him or at least share it.

Bob Kitts said his feud with the owner of the 83-year house, a former high school classmate, has deteriorated to the point where they speak to each other only through lawyers.

Kitts said his lawyer has drafted a lawsuit that he hopes will force Amanda Reece to turn over the money she has kept.

Most of the currency, issued in 1927 and 1929, is in good condition, and some of the bills are so rare that one currency appraiser valued the treasure at up to $500,000, Kitts said.

Reece accuses Kitts of extortion.

The fight began in May 2006 when Kitts was gutting Reece's bathroom and found a box below the medicine cabinet that contained $25,200.

"I almost passed out," Kitts recalled. "It was the ultimate contractor fantasy."

He called Reece, who rushed home. Together they found another steel box tied to the end of a wire nailed to a stud. Inside was more than $100,000, Kitts said. Two more boxes were filled with a mix of money and religious memorabilia.

"It was insane," Kitts said. "She was in shock — she was a wreck."

The bundles had "P. Dunne" written on them, a likely reference to Peter Dunne, a businessman who owned the home during the Depression.

Kitts said he took some of the currency for an appraisal and learned that many of the $10 bills were rare 1929-series Cleveland Federal Reserve bank notes, worth about $85 each. There also were $500 bills and one $1,000 bill.

John Chambers, an attorney for Reece, said Kitts rejected his client's offer of a 10 percent finder's fee and demanded 40 percent of the small fortune.

Reece has no intention of backing down in the face of what she considers a shakedown, Chambers said.

Kitts asserts he found lost money, and court rulings in Ohio establish that a "finders keepers" law applies if there's no reason to believe any owner will reappear to claim it.

It may be up to a judge to decide, said Heidi Robertson, a professor who teaches property law at Cleveland State University.

Kitts said it would be unfair for him to take everything.

"For such a happy, exciting adventure, I can't believe it just went to heck like this," he said.

[DARISC]

I don't understand. Workman finds something in employer's house and takes it. Is that not theft?

Does the plumber have the money in his possesion (did he steal it)? Or is he just filing a claim? If the former, have the A-hole arrested. If the latter, I guess you'd best contact a lawyer, in which case I'd wanna go litigious and sue the greedy pr-ck.

If I were the finder, I'd be happy for the homeowner, would happily accept a "finders fee" if offered, but no way would I feel that I had ANY claim to ANYthing that I found on someone's private property.

If I were the plumber I'd feel ENTITLED to feeling good about myself for being an honest person (more & more a novel concept these days?).

[Dan in Pasadena]

Instead of a crime you have to remember the time frame we're talking about. The United States in the mid 1940's? The Great Depression is a VERY recent memory. Some people are't going to trust a bank again no matter what. Makes me wonder how the person who owned the house could have died and told no one, but obviously it is possible because it happened.

[Moses]

A friends old neighbors hired a driller to put in a well for irrigation. He found natural gas. A lot. The well driller? He got paid for drilling the well.

[450knotOffice]

That contractor is the perfect example of what's is wrong with people these days. It's all about greed.

[kstar]

A thread with (so far) consensus!

How long can this last?

Best,

Kurt

[RickM]

I found a nice 911 in your garage while repairing the garage door opener. Now it's my car.

If the plumber found that in my wall I'd insist he put it back. Those bills make good insulation.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I'd kick that contractor off the job for starters.

Ethically, yes the owner should give the contractor something as a finder's fee, but given the bad blood that's developing over this, I'd definitely terminate his contract.

[Nostril Cheese]

property owner gets the money