Finders keepers, sometimes extended as the children's rhyme finders keepers, losers weepers, is an
English adage
A proverb (from ) or an adage is a simple, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and are an example of formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phrase ...
with the premise that when something is unowned or abandoned, whoever finds it first may claim it for themselves to own, by the “first in time” legal standard. The phrase relates to an
ancient Roman law of similar meaning and has been expressed in various ways over the centuries. It can be uncertain, however, just when or how something is unowned or abandoned, and a party other than the finder may lay claim to it, leading to legal or ethical disputes, whose findings different courts or
jurisdictions
Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' and 'speech' or 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple levels ...
may interpret differently. In one case involving two claimants, the 1982 English
Court of Appeal
An appellate court, commonly called a court of appeal(s), appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to Hearing (law), hear a Legal case, case upon appeal from a trial court or other ...
case ''
Parker v British Airways Board'', the judgement of
Donaldson L.J. declared, "Finders keepers, unless the true owner claims the article".
[Parker v British Airways Board (1982) 1 All ER 834](_blank)
/ref>
Application
*One of the most common uses of "finders keepers" involves shipwreck
A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. It results from the event of ''shipwrecking'', which may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately thre ...
s. Under international maritime law
Maritime law or admiralty law is a body of law that governs nautical issues and private maritime disputes. Admiralty law consists of both domestic law on maritime activities, and private international law governing the relationships between pri ...
, for shipwrecks of a certain age, the original owner may have lost all claim to the cargo. Anyone who finds the wreck may then file a salvage claim on it and place a lien on the vessel, and subsequently mount a salvage operation.
* Some philosophies, such as anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism (colloquially: ancap or an-cap) is a political philosophy and economic theory that advocates for the abolition of centralized states in favor of stateless societies, where systems of private property are enforced by pri ...
, that advocate a right to own land and other natural resources appeal to the doctrine of finders keepers in the case of claiming ownership of what was previously unowned (see ''terra nullius
''Terra nullius'' (, plural ''terrae nullius'') is a Latin expression meaning " nobody's land".
Since the nineteenth century it has occasionally been used in international law as a principle to justify claims that territory may be acquired ...
'').
* In the United States, the Homestead Act
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of Federal lands, government land or the American frontier, public domain, typically called a Homestead (buildings), homestead. In all, mo ...
allowed people to claim land as their own as long as it was originally unowned and was then developed by the claimant.
* In the field of social simulation
Social simulation is a research field that applies computational methods to study issues in the social sciences. The issues explored include problems in computational law, psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, political science, econom ...
, Rosaria Conte
Rosaria Conte (14 April 1954 in Rome – 5 July 2016 in Rome) was an Italian social scientist. She was the head of the Laboratory of Agent Based Social Simulation at the ISTC- CNR in Rome, which hosts an interdisciplinary research group working at ...
and Cristiano Castelfranchi have used "finders, keepers" as a case study for simulating the evolution of norms in simple societies.Nicole J. Saam and Andreas Harrer: Simulating Norms, Social Inequality, and Functional Change in Artificial Societies
/ref>
See also
* Homestead principle
The homestead principle is the principle by which one gains ownership of an unowned natural resource by performing an act of original appropriation. Appropriation could be enacted by putting an unowned resource to active use (as with using i ...
* Bailment
Bailment is a legal relationship in common law, where the owner of personal property ("chattel") transfers physical possession of that property to another, who holds the property for a certain purpose, but retains ownership. The owner who sur ...
* Lost, mislaid, and abandoned property
In property law, lost, mislaid, and abandoned property are categories of the common law of property which deals with personal property or chattel which has left the possession of its rightful owner without having directly entered the possessi ...
* Adverse possession
Adverse possession in common law, and the related civil law (legal system), civil law concept of usucaption (also ''acquisitive prescription'' or ''prescriptive acquisition''), are legal mechanisms under which a person who does not have title (p ...
("possession is nine-tenths of the law
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law" is an expression meaning that ownership is easier to maintain if one has possession of something, or difficult to enforce if one does not. The expression is also stated as "possession is ten points of the l ...
")
* Uti possidetis
''Uti possidetis'' is an expression that originated in Roman private law, where it was the name of a procedure about possession of land. Later, by a misleading analogy, it was transferred to international law, where it has had more than one mean ...
* '' Usucapio''/Usucaption
Usucaption (), also known as ''acquisitive prescription'', is a concept found in civil law systems and has its origin in the Roman law of property.
Usucaption is a method by which ownership of property (i.e. title to the property) can be gained ...
* Theft by finding
In criminal and property law, theft by finding occurs when someone chances upon an object which seems abandoned and takes possession of the object, but fails to take steps to establish whether the object is genuinely abandoned and not merely ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Finders, Keepers
Property law
Legal idioms