[meteorite-list] Who owns the meteorite?

[R N Hartman]

So regarding the article, in essence this interpretation is saying that if 
you have a lease on land at which time a meteorite lands on it, you have 
legal rights to it.  But you must have the lease, not be wandering down a 
public road or across a school yard, or even being on a dry lake or the open 
desert.  Yes??

Ron Hartman

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thunder Stone" <stanleygregr at hotmail.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 2:11 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Who owns the meteorite?


>
> I found this interesting.
>
> I apologize if it has already been posted.
>
> Greg S.
>
> http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202446510671&Who_owns_the_meteorite&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1&loginloop=o
>
>
>
> Who owns the meteorite?
>
> In the dispute over the one that landed in a Lorton, Va., medical office 
> earlier this year, the tenants should win.
>
> Andrea J. Boyack
>
> March 22, 2010
>
> On Jan. 18 at 5:45 p.m., a meteorite crashed through the ceiling of a 
> medical office in Lorton, Va. It damaged the building and interior 
> finishings but hurt no one. The meteorite's fall from space is over, but 
> the earthly battle over its ownership has just begun. This, in a 
> circumstance of pure kismet, was a mere 90 minutes after I had wrapped up 
> a lesson in my property law course discussing meteorite ownership 
> disputes, among other things.
>
> "It's evident that ownership is tied to the landowner," asserted one of 
> the landlords. The tenant doctors, by publicizing their intent to donate 
> the meteorite to the Smithsonian and any proceeds to Haitian earthquake 
> relief, have likely won the public relations battle in the court of public 
> opinion. But who should win title in a court of law?
>
> Centuries-old common law allocates original ownership of unowned things 
> based on first possession. First possession by a person, illustrated by 
> the ubiquitous case of Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175 (N.Y. 1805), holds 
> that ownership to an unowned "wild thing" vests in the hunter at the 
> moment of actual possession (capture), at least if such capture occurs on 
> "unpossessed land." The ownership analysis becomes more complicated when 
> capture occurs on private property, because allocation of ownership then 
> turns on whether actual possession vests the captor with ownership or 
> whether the thing is ineligible for capture because its mere presence on 
> the land has made it constructively possessed by the landowner.
>
> Constructive-possession analysis is not required in cases involving 
> trespass: The law clearly prohibits trespassers from claiming ownership 
> through capture. The asserted rule that a meteorite is property of the 
> landowner actually comes from Oregon Iron Co. v. Hughes, 81 P. 572 (Ore. 
> 1905), a case in which the other title claimant was a trespassing 
> meteorite-hunter. The rule in that case is unsurprising, but irrelevant 
> here: The Lorton doctors lawfully possess the premises where they found 
> the meteorite.
>
> The law finds constructive possession by a landowner of previously unowned 
> objects appearing on his land in three types of ways. First, we define 
> real property to include all natural objects growing out of or under the 
> land. Second, the doctrine of ratione soli (by reason of the soil) 
> establishes a landowner's first-in-time claim for some situate natural 
> objects (e.g., beehives, beavers and nesting birds) which are deemed 
> "possessed" by the land itself. Third, under the doctrine of fixtures, if 
> a once-movable object becomes attached to realty to such an extent that it 
> becomes physically a part of it, then such object ceases to be separately 
> owned personalty and becomes a part of the real estate to which it is 
> affixed. The doctrine of fixtures sometimes appears in landlord-tenant 
> disputes because a tenant may not remove or transfer title to a fixture 
> without the landlord's consent.
>
> Is a meteorite adequately attached to the real property so as to be part 
> of the soil or a fixture? In one case, Goddard v. Winchell, 52 N.W. 1124 
> (Iowa 1892), the court said yes. In that case, an ownership dispute arose 
> after a large meteorite fell onto prairie land in Forest City, Iowa, 
> embedding itself three feet into the ground. The "grass rights" tenant 
> sold the meteorite to a collector, and the landlord claimed title. The 
> court held that, since the meteorite in question had been found below the 
> surface of the ground, it had in effect become part of the realty. And 
> since fixtures cannot be removed unilaterally by tenants, ownership of the 
> meteorite was awarded to the landlord. The court reasoned, "It was not a 
> movable thing 'on the ground.' It was in the earth, and in a very 
> significant sense, immovable." Although the Forest City meteorite was 
> embedded in the soil, the Lorton meteorite was not affixed to the realty 
> in any way.
>
> Even if a court found that the "property owner" should always have 
> constructive possession of meteorites on its land, this does not end the 
> title inquiry here. The concept of "property owner" is more complicated 
> than many people recognize because ownership interests in land can be 
> split among multiple owners. Title to real property can be shared 
> temporally (e.g., between a life tenant and the holder of the remainder 
> interest) and concurrently (e.g., among multiple tenants in common). In 
> addition, a lease grants the tenant a current possessory ownership estate 
> in the leased property.
>
> Since the "ownership" of real property during a lease term is actually 
> shared by landlord and tenant, merely granting that something belongs to 
> the "owner" of real property does not indicate whether it has vested in 
> the tenant or the landlord. Since the tenant is in exclusive possession 
> during the lease term, even with respect to the landlord, constructive 
> possession (if it applies at all) should logically vest ownership in the 
> tenant. The rights of the tenant to the leased real property, including 
> any fixtures, ends at lease termination. But unlike the Forest City 
> meteorite, the Lorton meteorite never became affixed to the realty, so 
> that limitation does not apply.
>
> There is another historic meteorite landing that led to a landlord-tenant 
> property rights dispute. In 1954, a meteorite crashed through the roof of 
> a rented home in Sylacauga, Ala., striking the tenant, Ann Hodges. She 
> claimed ownership, as did her landlord. In this, the only documented case 
> of a human being hit by a meteorite, the parties settled out of court. We 
> thus have no judicial opinion resolving landlord versus tenant meteorite 
> title, at least with respect to meteorites not embedded into the ground.
>
> A meteorite lying on the floor of a doctor's office is clearly not a 
> fixture. Finding constructive possession due to ratione soli of a product 
> that indubitably fell from outer space stretches credulity. The Lorton 
> doctors were not trespassers; they were not acting as landlord's agents; 
> the property was not landlord's private residence. The doctors' mere act 
> of taking actual possession of the meteorite in this case therefore likely 
> gives them first finder's rights to it. And even if by some strained 
> reasoning a court would find that the "property owner" always has prior 
> constructive possession of meteorites found on its property, the tenant, 
> as holder of the possessory estate, is the current "property owner" here.
>
> Both law and logic favor the tenants. The doctors were "first in time," 
> both through constructive possession, as holder of the possessory estate, 
> and actual possession, through capture of the meteorite. Meteorite 
> ownership therefore has vested in them, regardless of which possession 
> principle applies.
>
> This is not just the right answer from a moral or public opinion 
> standpoint; it is the inescapable legal conclusion as well.
>
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