Finders ‘no’ keepers

By Garry Hertzberg, practising attorney at Dewey Hertzberg levy and host of the Laws of Life with Garry Hertzberg on Cliffcentral.com writes:

One of my colleagues in the office found a phone in the bathroom on the 11th floor.

Being the honest guy he is, he went to all the offices on the 11th floor searching for the owner. The scenario was simple; the area was contained and the owner had to be somewhere on that floor and as it happened he did find the owner who had not even realised that he had lost his phone.

It’s different to walking into a bathroom in a shopping mall and seeing the latest iPhone next to the basin because then it could belong to any number of people. You can take the phone and put it in your pocket, you can take it to centre management or you could try and find the owner yourself.

Handing a found item to a manager on duty is not always the right thing – you would be making an assumption that the person you hand it to is as honest as you.

Trying to give a phone back these days can be problematic. In days gone by you could look through a phonebook to find ‘mom’, now you want

to phone mom but the cellphone is locked with a passcode so you can’t get in to get the number. My colleague mentioned above has a ‘locked screen feature’ on his phone which allows him to put his email address on the locked screen.

This is a great feature which allows a finder to contact you. I have added this to my phone too.

Returning lost items is not just the right thing to do, it’s the law. The basic principle is that when something is found, it still belongs to the owner unless the owner deliberately chose to relinquish ownership. There is a duty to take reasonable steps to return the item to the rightful owner, for example, if a wallet is found and there is an ID inside, you are lawfully obliged to try and return it.

Putting morals aside, there is no such thing as ‘finders keepers’ in South African law. If you know who it belongs to and choose to keep it, that’s theft and that’s a crime.