I found a phone, I did not bring it to the stadium I found it at, because the lost and found is a VOID, I took it and called some people on the phone's contact list and got the phone back to the owner.
You had all the phone contacts. You knew you would be able to get the phone back to the owner. In this case there is no way you could believe you had even a 50/50 chance of getting the cues back to the owner. The one good chance he had of reuniting it with the owner was to turn it in to lost and found or a DCC official, but he chose not do that. Or check for contact info in the pool case right there in the parking lot so you could call the guy on the spot. He didn't do that either. When you pass up the good chance for the slim chance it's pretty telling. There is only one good reason for doing that--because you don't really want it back in the owner's hands.
Most people don't have contact information in their pool cases, and this guy
claims he didn't know there was any contact info in this pool case until after he got home in Florida. So at the time he mad the decision to cart the case back with him to Florida, he had every reason to believe there would be no contact information in the case thus making finding the owner a low probability proposition.
First off, I saw Joe Frady break a Szamboti in anger, and give the butt to the houseman, I have seen people give this game up on the spot. So is it possible, absolutely.
These cues weren't shattered. If they were, I would agree with you, it would then be reasonable to assume they were abandoned. But when you see a case full of cues in a parking lot of a pool event, every single person, yes every last one, are going to assume that it somehow got separated from the owner not by the owner's choice, probably from being leaned against the car or left on the roof as they drove off, and that the owner wants them back. Nobody, and I mean nobody, would ever believe they were abandoned, including you, so stop being disingenuous.
Again, he found something on the ground, and whether you agree or not, the guy was not a thief.
When you find something that isn't yours, and keep it instead of making a reasonable effort to return it to the owner when such efforts would have a fairly high probability for success, then it is absolutely a form of theft. Albeit not as bad as robbing a bank, and not quite as bad as swiping it from the player when he is in the bathroom, but still a form of theft none the less. If this guy had any intention of trying to get it back to the owner he would have checked the case for contact info while he was in the parking lot so he could call the guy on the spot, and if there was no contact info he would have turned it in right there at the event where it had by far the best chance of getting back into the owner's hands.
To steal requires deliberate action to take something that is not yours while making no effort to see that it gets back to its rightful owner.
There, I fixed that for you. This guy did nothing--nothing--to try to get it back to the owner. He didn't even bother to check to see if there was contact info in the case where he could have called the guy on the spot and the guy could have met him in the parking lot in 5 minutes. He didn't turn it in where he knew the guy would be looking for it. He did nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Pretty telling.
This guy FOUND something, he did not take it.
If he didn't take it, how did it end up in Florida?
BTW the title of the original thread should have been LOST cues at the Derby
Again, if you have a way that has a reasonable chance to get the item back to the owner, but refuse to do it, it is a form of theft. He had several reasonable ways. First was looking for contact info in the case as soon as he found it. He didn't do that. Second was turning it in right where he knows the guy is going to be checking to see if it was turned in. He didn't do that either. The one way that wasn't reasonable wasn't taking it home with you half way across the country when you expect that there will be nothing that identifies the case to an owner. He intentionally chose a course of action where it would be far less likely to be able to reunite the case with the owner than several other options he had. The only reason you would do this is if you had no intention of having it be reunited with the owner.
