A Research On The Legal System Of Picking Up Lost Properties

The issue of picking up lost properties is one of the basic topics of the Civil Law. The cognition of occupation is the premise of defining the lost properties. Objects should be authorized to possess and the people without authorization can only control them. On this basis, the congestion of the lost things should persist the principle of subjective and objective consistent. Subjectively, the owner lost its possession not from his will; objectively, lost things should be limited to no owner chattel. The analysis of lost properties can be divided into four aspects: the subject, the object, subjective and objective. The subject includes the owner and the finder. The owner can be a natural person, a legal person or other organizations. The capacity for civil conduct of a natural person has no relationship with the capacity to be the subject of a lost property, and a person with limited or without capacity for civil conduct can be the subject of a lost property. The object is the property lost, which has to satisfy the following conditions: it must be a thing and a chattel, it has a owner but without a holder when it's picked up. Subjectively, a finder has to find and control the lost properties. Find where the lost things are and take the things directly. Objectively, the existence of the lost properties, picking up and control it , the time , the place and the way of such a behavior form the main parts.Later, this paper points out the necessity and urgency of the perfection of the lost and found objects issues and some unreasonable regulations in the existing laws, for example, the unequal rights and obligations, all non-claimed lost and found objects belong to the state and the regulations for damage to the lost things is not clear and regulations for claiming the property found is incomplete. In addition, this paper analyzes why the existing laws encountered bottleneck when handing new social problems by incorporating the latest cases which had great influence. The"Liangli case"indicated that current regulations tried to promote people's moral level and the boundary between civil liability and criminal liability was unclear. According to that the custody obligations of the finder too heavy reflected by "pick up the diamonds case".After the comparison of the regulations in Germany, Japan, UK, USA and Taiwan, this paper seeks out what we can learn from them and plans how to perfect the system in china by selective reference and translations while considering national conditions. The German laws demand that the one who picked up the lost properties in public places should hand them in to the place's manager and clarify no need for public announcement when there are dangers of corruption or the cost for safekeeping is too high. Besides, the finder's rights of asking for payment or keeping are entitled. Further, the finder, or the town, or others could be entitled the ownership of the lost things when the original owner can't be found. The Japanese law has very specific definitions for the subject, contents and the format of the announcements, entitling the chief police officer and the owner of place where the lost properties were found the right to handle the lost things. Specific punishments were formulated to ensure the laws are executed. The UK and USA laws pay attention to protect the rights of the original owner, but they also allow the finder get the properties'ownership when the original owner can't be found. The laws of Taiwan province establish the judgments method when the properties'owner exists and admit the finder's ownership by law and their right for payments and the exceptions, and clarify their lien.When distinguishing the obligation of taking from that of a safekeeping contract, this paper assumes that the taking obligation of the finder should be less. He should take 60% of responsibility for the reasonable loss of the properties he picked up if there is no bad intention. The subject of the claiming announcement should include not only the police organs, but also the manager of the public place and the grassroots autonomous organization, For those less valuable and difficult to keep properties which are related to everyday use, the announcement should be published when they were handed in, and the announcement for others should be published in 7 days. The announcement for broadly sold everyday use less valuable things can be published on community bulletin board and the announcement for those valuable or personal information related things should be on media as newspapers, magazines or government websites. The finder can get the ownership of those less valuable lost properties two weeks later, if there is still no claiming. And the lost properties can be used, abandoned if it will cost much more to keep them or to prevent from corruption than their own values. The lien of finders should be protected to prevent their rights only staying on papers. The regulations on the civil liability of the damage to the found objects is not clear and in practice can only be regulated in accordance with general tort liability system, which is premised on the existence of fault or special provision on the law. When the finder's intention is good, it does not meet the basic principle of civil law for him to bear the infringements. Therefore, the liability should be judged when taking full account of its intention and be distinguished by well-intentioned and malicious. The former should be regulated by unjust enrichment, and the latter should bear the consequences of infringement.