3 ms·

Do you think if you buy a stolen good without knowing it is stolen you should get to keep it? If not, where do we draw the line?

gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
If I buy the goods in a big box retailer and the goods turn out to be stolen I assume that the retailer will make the original owner good.
- detaro 8y ago
  The retailer is in jail and all their assets seized and redistributed already.
leetcrew 8y ago
I think it honestly depends. to make an admittedly weird example: suppose you go to a dealership to buy a used car. you decide on one that's going for close to the KBB value, do all the paperwork, and drive the car off the lot. a year later you find out the dealership owner is a shady guy and some of the cars he sold were somehow stolen. the business no longer exists and the guy is nowhere to be found. should you really be out $10k and your ride to work? the case for returning the property in this situation is more practical than moral. that is, it's probably just easier to just find the guy with the car and take it than to extract money from a deadbeat car salesman who probably doesn't have it anymore. I find these sorts of legal things distasteful, but I guess I can see why we have them. in an ideal world, I think there should be some sort of safe harbor protection for people who make a reasonable effort in good faith to check that a transaction is bona fide.
- jacobr1 8y ago
  This is why a lender for a house purchase requires title insurance. The insurance kicks in to make you whole if it turns out the house was not the prior owner's to sell. I don't think the same things exists with cars, but requiring it in some way seems like a way to handle the problem in general. In state-level social fund equivalent. This happens with insurance too. One of the costs baked into premiums are state mandated contributions to common insurance solvency pools. If a carrier goes out of business, the insured is still covered by the common pool that is used to fund claims (that have now be transferred to a solvent firm or trustee).
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
  The "safe harbor" is that you're not accused of stealing the car yourself. Remember, you may be an innocent victim, but someone, somewhere, had the car stolen from them and they may not have had insurance on it.
- wahern 8y ago
  Someone has to eat the loss: the original owner or the last purchaser. The question is, between the two who is the "least cost avoider"? That is, the one who we can most easily incentivize in order to arrive at the best overall outcome. In short, if the last purchaser got to keep the car, that means he would be less risk averse to buying from car dealers with risky reputations, effectively increasing the market for stolen cars. And this increase in the market would result in more stolen cars overall. The existing default rule is, of course, based on a judgment that we won't be worse off in a world where people can fraudulently claim that their car is stolen and then get it back while also capturing the sale profit. Considering that most people are law abiding and have very good reason already to protect their car from theft regardless of which default rule we choose, it's not a bad rule on its face. > in an ideal world, I think there should be some sort of safe harbor protection for people who make a reasonable effort in good faith to check that a transaction is bona fide. It sounds like you may have a legal education given the language you're using. IIRC this is how the rule for real estate works in the presence of land registration systems. We flip the default rule to incentivize recordation. If two fraudulent sales are made by a seller back-to-back before title is recorded, it's the last purchaser who gets the property. This incentivizes each purchaser to record his purchase as quickly as possible, and to do so in a manner that closes the window for a fraudulent sale, such as by keeping payment in escrow until recordation is successful. (See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_purchaser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_purchaser)
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    no formal legal education, I'm just an armchair philosopher who occasionally reads about legal issues. thanks for sharing the bit about real estate, I will have to read more about the motivation for flipping the default rule there.

gdfasfklshg4 8y ago

If I buy the goods in a big box retailer and the goods turn out to be stolen I assume that the retailer will make the original owner good.

detaro 8y ago
The retailer is in jail and all their assets seized and redistributed already.

leetcrew 8y ago

I think it honestly depends. to make an admittedly weird example: suppose you go to a dealership to buy a used car. you decide on one that's going for close to the KBB value, do all the paperwork, and drive the car off the lot. a year later you find out the dealership owner is a shady guy and some of the cars he sold were somehow stolen. the business no longer exists and the guy is nowhere to be found. should you really be out $10k and your ride to work? the case for returning the property in this situation is more practical than moral. that is, it's probably just easier to just find the guy with the car and take it than to extract money from a deadbeat car salesman who probably doesn't have it anymore. I find these sorts of legal things distasteful, but I guess I can see why we have them. in an ideal world, I think there should be some sort of safe harbor protection for people who make a reasonable effort in good faith to check that a transaction is bona fide.

jacobr1 8y ago
This is why a lender for a house purchase requires title insurance. The insurance kicks in to make you whole if it turns out the house was not the prior owner's to sell. I don't think the same things exists with cars, but requiring it in some way seems like a way to handle the problem in general. In state-level social fund equivalent. This happens with insurance too. One of the costs baked into premiums are state mandated contributions to common insurance solvency pools. If a carrier goes out of business, the insured is still covered by the common pool that is used to fund claims (that have now be transferred to a solvent firm or trustee).
HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
The "safe harbor" is that you're not accused of stealing the car yourself. Remember, you may be an innocent victim, but someone, somewhere, had the car stolen from them and they may not have had insurance on it.
wahern 8y ago
Someone has to eat the loss: the original owner or the last purchaser. The question is, between the two who is the "least cost avoider"? That is, the one who we can most easily incentivize in order to arrive at the best overall outcome. In short, if the last purchaser got to keep the car, that means he would be less risk averse to buying from car dealers with risky reputations, effectively increasing the market for stolen cars. And this increase in the market would result in more stolen cars overall. The existing default rule is, of course, based on a judgment that we won't be worse off in a world where people can fraudulently claim that their car is stolen and then get it back while also capturing the sale profit. Considering that most people are law abiding and have very good reason already to protect their car from theft regardless of which default rule we choose, it's not a bad rule on its face. > in an ideal world, I think there should be some sort of safe harbor protection for people who make a reasonable effort in good faith to check that a transaction is bona fide. It sounds like you may have a legal education given the language you're using. IIRC this is how the rule for real estate works in the presence of land registration systems. We flip the default rule to incentivize recordation. If two fraudulent sales are made by a seller back-to-back before title is recorded, it's the last purchaser who gets the property. This incentivizes each purchaser to record his purchase as quickly as possible, and to do so in a manner that closes the window for a fraudulent sale, such as by keeping payment in escrow until recordation is successful. (See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_purchaser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_purchaser)
- leetcrew 8y ago
  no formal legal education, I'm just an armchair philosopher who occasionally reads about legal issues. thanks for sharing the bit about real estate, I will have to read more about the motivation for flipping the default rule there.