Peterson v. Diaz
Opinion
We reverse a summary final judgment entered in favor of appellee, the original owner of personal property lost in a public place. The dispositive issue on appeal involves a determination of whether appel-lee’s act in claiming or calling for the lost property, BEFORE it was found, constituted sufficient compliance with the requirements of Section 715.01, Florida Statutes (1977).1 We hold that it did not.
[991] The pertinent facts are as follows: On November 11,1977, appellants found a camera case containing United States and Canadian currency with an aggregate value of $17,215.2 The camera case was found at Daphne’s Restaurant within the Sheraton Riverhouse Hotel in Miami, Florida, where appellants were employed. Subsequently the camera case and its contents were turned over to the Dade County Public Safety Department. On May 30, 1978, appellant Karen Young, in Circuit Court Case No. 78-8945, filed a replevin suit seeking return of the currency.3 On January 11, 1979, appellee, a Chilean resident, filed a motion to intervene in Case No. 78-8945 alleging that he was the rightful owner of the currency and entitled to its return. Ap-pellee moved for summary judgment referring to a deposition which confirmed that he had reported the loss of his property to the hotel at a time prior to its finding.4 It is undisputed that no further inquiry or claim on the property was made by appellee until December 10, 1978, some 13 months after the property had been found. On June 22,1979, the court below entered summary judgment in favor of appellee specifically finding that appellee’s claim to the currency on “the day following its loss satisfies the provisions of Section 715.01, Florida Statutes (1977) inasmuch as both the fact that the intervenor did make such a claim and that he is the rightful owner of the currency in this cause remain uncontro-verted and uncontested”.
We disagree with the trial court’s finding that an owner meets the requirements of Section 715.01, Florida Statutes (1977) by claiming the property before it is found. Section 715.01, Florida Statutes (1977) places an obligation on rightful owners of personal property found in public places to call for or claim same within six months after the finding of such property. This, appellee undisputedly did not do. Thus, under the Statute, title to the property vested in appellants. While Section 715.-01, Florida Statutes (1977) appears to be in derogation of an owner’s common law right to lost property,5 our statutes are a limitation on the common law rather than an enlargement of it. Linger v. Balfour, 102 Fla. 591, 136 So. 433 (1931).
Reversed and remanded with instructions to enter judgment in favor of appellants.
Footnotes
Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI
379 So. 2d 990 (Peterson v. Diaz) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.