Legal Question in Criminal Law in Canada

Lost and found lottery tickets

I was working at a store and found some lottery tickets

in a package. I planned to return them at the end of the

day (after my shift) to the customer service area so they

could be placed in the lost and found. However, before

my shift ended, the woman who had bought the tickets

came in and was frantically searching the area where

she had left them. When I was asked if I had seen

them, I took the package of tickets on my cart and gave

them to her. She wanted to call the police for fear I had

stolen and planned to keep them, while the customer

service department told me to always immediately

bring what I would find in the future to their desk. If the

woman had decided to call the cops, would I have been

charged? Am I liable as a store employee, to look after

peoples' property?


Asked on 8/02/03, 10:21 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Kenneth Golish Golish, Kenneth W.

Re: Lost and found lottery tickets

It is pretty clear that a person can be guilty of theft when he or she finds lost property and does not attempt to find the owner. The proper thing to do would be to deliver the property to the police or, as you were about to do, to your company's lost and found department.

The reason theft may occur in these circumstances is that lost property is, as circumstances may suggest, still owned property and a theft will occur when someone takes property, without colour of right, with the intention of depriving the owner of that property whether temporarily or permanently.

In these circumstances, since you did not know who the owner was, and were going to deliver it to your company, this does not suggest an intention to steal. Consider too that the market value of these tickets at the time would have been less than their purchase price. Someone might speculate that you intended to claim a ticket as your own if it turn out to be a winner, but that would be speculation unless you admitted that was your plan. That you returned the items to the owner immediately after determining who the owner was, suggests no such plan and no such intention to steal. If you technically violated a company policy that you may or may not have known about at the time, that by itself cannot make you guilty of theft.

Therefore, if the police had charged you, it would have been a pretty lame decision. As for the customer, she was rude to accuse you of a crime rather than thank you for your honesty.

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Answered on 8/04/03, 10:24 am


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