Taking good balls from range buckets

[tefunk]

Canada doesn't have states?  Wow, ground breaking revelation for me. You are wrong and I have the legal precedent to back it up.  You still have shown me nothing at all.  You just keep saying the same thing over and over with no actual content to your posts.    If you had any proof you should have posted it by now, instead of your cryptic messages...

You haven't provided any legal precedent that would be applicable to the facts of one taking a ball from a range basket. Not one. You couldn't even quote a full statute with the definition of theft... Maybe tomorrow, or in a year from now, you'll go back to drawing board, figure it out, and surprise us. And then you'll realize you were wrong. Until then, enjoy the rest of your week, kid.

[Duff McGee]

The problem is that your logic is flawed. Ownership of property is based on certain principles and is legally defined, which your argument does not account for, so either you don't understand the law or you just refuse to acknowledge that your position is wrong. It is not simply based on who purchased the original item. I'm going to state this as clearly as I can to the best of my knowledge, hopefully @Mr. Desmond or @Duff McGee can corrrect me if I'm wrong: A golf ball hit onto a driving range can be considered either lost property or abandoned property. In either case, property ownership is transferred to the first finder of the ball. In this case, it is the driving range, as they are the ones that picked it up. You cannot claim the ball that you find in your range bucket as your own because it now belongs to the driving range; it is in their possession, in their bucket, on their property, and they did not lose, misplace, or abandon it. In essence, taking it is theft. It does not matter if it doesn't match any other ball in the bucket. BTW, if you wander onto a driving range and pick up a premium ball, it can still be considered theft, because you "found" the ball on private property, meaning you were trespassing. In that case, the only entity that can find the ball and claim ownership is the driving range. If the ball is found on public property, it's fair game. In either case, the true owner of the ball can come back and claim ownership. Obviously this can be hard to prove, but if you have a unique way of marking your ball, you can probably prove it is yours if it matches others in your bag or something. Either way, it's just a golf ball. Nobody is going to take you to court over it so this is all just academic discussion, but the range is perfectly within its rights to refuse service to you if they see you stealing from them, which is what you're doing if you pocket a ball from their bucket, no matter how you or anybody else wants to rationalize it.

It's funny you mention this just being an "academic" exercise because I was just thinking that this is the exact type of question a 1L Property professor would put on an exam and freak students out.

[rkim291968]

24 pages, really?

Life is too short.

[Duff McGee]

Ok so I just read Puma's responses and 1) he is wrong and his "precedence" means nothing bc you can find one court's response in the world doing a google search for basically anything you are claiming. Some courts get it wrong or people can easily cherry pick quotes that appear to support their positions but do not if read in its entirely. 2) I don't care if he believes I'm an attorney or not and I'm not going to go through an entire legal analysis quoting cases from 1650 England or some 1810 SCOTUS case because it's not worth my time.

[ryan772]

If you rented a bucket of balls from a range, and subsequently hit on off the property, would you feel morally obligated to pay the owner for losing their possession? If you went to a casino on vacation in las Vegas and kept one of the 1 dollar chips and traded in the rest this would be stealing as well, and yet there are chips from places that are worth quite a bit of money due to various reasons. I'm surprised the cops haven't gone after the owner of said chips for possessing stolen goods..

[oldmotor]

24 pages, really? Life is too short.

I was thinking the same thing.

[inthehole]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkim291968

24 pages, really?

Life is too short.

I was thinking the same thing.

yep ... amazing how some seemingly unsuspecting threads just evoke emotion and take on a life of their own.

[Valleygolfer]

I usually go buy a couple of dozen, Pro v1s and B330 golf balls, brand new, write "range" with a sharpee on each one and hit them into the range just to cause people to have a moral tug of war there...

[Kenny Lee]

This sign is posted in the opening credits of Tin Cup

Yet, Roy wants to be paid in cash so he doesn't have to pay income tax.

And Romeo suggests stealing ProV's from the range at the US Open.

They both must be liberals . . . . . rules are for other people.

[Kenny Lee]

If you went to a casino on vacation in las Vegas and kept one of the 1 dollar chips and traded in the rest this would be stealing as well, and yet there are chips from places that are worth quite a bit of money due to various reasons. I'm surprised the cops haven't gone after the owner of said chips for possessing stolen goods..

This is not illegal. Assuming you actually paid for the chip. Keeping $1 or $5 chips is very common among collectors. It's perfectly legal.

However, keeping a FOUND chip IS illegal. If you are walking and see a chip lying on the casino floor, the rule of "finders keepers" does not apply. The chip is considered casino property and must be returned to the cage.

[Kenny Lee]

And Romeo suggests stealing ProV's from the range at the US Open.

Or maybe that was Roy, also? I don't remember.

[Pete F]

I like this sign better

[turtleback]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pumaAttack

Quote:

Originally Posted by 14ledo81


The ball that was left on the range was abandoned. At that point the range spent their time and money to retrieve it. It became theirs.

Ha, ok.

I spent time and money getting the range balls to drop out of the machine.

So that is mine now.   What is the difference?

So I just have to spend "time and money" to make an item mine?  Hahaha

I would love for a range owner to see me take a ProV1 and place it into my bag.  Then call the cops for the theft. How is the range going to prove that is their ball .  With a receipt?  No.  With the time and money it took to collect it... Yeah that is gonna hold up in court.

You really have no clue how the legal system works, do you?

They will prove it by a funny little thing called testimony - the testimony of the range owner that he saw you take it from the bucket.  And unless you are prepared to commit perjury, when asked you will have to admit you took it from the bucket.

And case over, guilty as charged.

So guys, how about we make it next Tuesday - you know, the day we go over to puma's house and take everything he cannot produce a receipt for, since apparently he thinks that having a receipt is a necessary requirement of ownership.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pumaAttack

Ha, just because some poster says its true doesn't mean it actually is.

I just found this legal precedent that says otherwise:

https://www.ngcoa.ca/Userfiles/File/GBC/1997/Fall/Legal%20Fall-97.pdf

Quote:

The acquittal was based on his view that the balls in question remained the property of the golfers who had hit them there, and not of the golf course where they were abandoned. So anyone taking them is not stealing from the golf course operator.

OK, this nonsense has to be exploded.

1) it was not a legal opinion, it was a news article.

2) It was not the US.  I suspect the precedent in Iraq might involve the loss of hands for the micreants.  THAT would not be  precedent for us, either.

3) Even if those problems did not exist, it was a trial court and there was no appeal.  The precedential (?) value of a trial court decision on a legal issue is virtually nil.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hardspoon

Quote:

Originally Posted by pumaAttack

I just found this legal precedent that says otherwise:

https://www.ngcoa.ca/Userfiles/File/GBC/1997/Fall/Legal%20Fall-97.pdf

This is particularly interesting since it occurred during a clear case of trespassing...seems crazy to me.

Foolish prosecutors did not charge them with trespassing.

When the best he can come up with in the way of precedent is a badly charged, badly argued, badly decided case, at the trial level from a different country with no value as a precedent, I feel pretty comfortable with my position.

[BubblesUSMC]

Ummm as long as they are not range balls go ahead and take them... we dont care.

Only reason they are in the basket is because someone was too lazy to separate them out when washing.

[Bryan Kasper]

My takeaway from this is that we all need to keep our balls in play so that we don't lose balls, thus we wont need to take any balls from the driving range. Problem solved.

[mdl]

To all of you who have voted "Take it without Hesitation", I would query you this: if the range buckets were full to the ever lovin' brim with shiny, bright, new ProVs...would ya snipe a few? C'mon, there's thousand of them, brightly, shiny, beautiful ProVs. We're talking a scenario where it's a pretty sure bet that the range paid for all those balls. But...there's a sea of them, buckets and buckets of brightly, shiny, new Tour balls. Who's gonna know the difference?? Grab a few.

I think this is the right comparison.  And in this case it would obviously be stealing.  The course has paid for those balls directly.  There's no gray area in this case.  I wish I played nice enough courses that I faced this (not hard) decision regularly!

Like I said before, I don't think I've ever actually taken a ball from a range bucket, but I voted take it because it seems a gray area to me and not clearly wrong to take a premium ball someone else lost on the range that got picked up by the range picker and missed by the staff.  I see the technical/legal arguments, but in terms of right/wrong, not legal/illegal, it seems similar enough to picking up a lost ball on the course that it seems clearly different than the situation you describe above.

[newtogolf]

I don't really care that people take golf balls from the range but I am amazed at the level of justification and denial that exists within a community that encourages us to act as a gentleman and hold ourselves accountable to playing by the rules of golf.

[colin007]

Ummm as long as they are not range balls go ahead and take them... we dont care.

Only reason they are in the basket is because someone was too lazy to separate them out when washing.

this is surprising.  i believe @BubblesUSMC course.