## Facts

- Leonard Charrier, a former corrections officer and self-described amateur archeologist, identified Trudeau Plantation near Angola, Louisiana, as the likely site of a historic Tunica village.
- Charrier obtained limited permission from a caretaker he mistakenly believed owned the land to search with a metal detector and then excavate.
- Over about three years, Charrier excavated roughly 150 burial sites and removed two to two-and-one-half tons of funerary and trade artifacts from graves.
- Charrier continued excavating despite knowing he lacked authorization from the true landowners.
- Charrier leased the artifacts to a museum for inventory and display and initially misrepresented the artifacts’ origin to conceal the excavation site.
- When Charrier attempted to sell the collection, he could not establish title; the plantation landowners and the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe asserted ownership.
- Charrier sued for a declaration of ownership or, alternatively, restitution under unjust enrichment for excavation and preservation efforts; the trial court rejected both claims.

## Issues

1. Whether funerary objects removed from Native American graves on land the excavator did not own were “abandoned” movables subject to acquisition by occupancy.
2. Whether asserted descendant ownership could be recognized without a perfect chain of title to specific individuals buried at the site.
3. Whether an unauthorized excavator could recover in unjust enrichment for labor and expenses incurred in excavating and preserving burial artifacts.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the judgment rejecting Charrier’s ownership claim.
- The court held that burial goods interred with the dead were not abandoned and were not subject to acquisition by an unauthorized excavator.
- The court accepted that the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe established sufficient descent to assert rights in the burial goods without proving a perfect chain of title.
- The court affirmed denial of unjust enrichment because Charrier acted knowingly without proper permission and therefore did not establish compensable impoverishment.

## Legal Principles

- Abandonment requires intent to relinquish ownership; interment of objects with the dead is inconsistent with intent to abandon.
- Funerary objects taken from graves without authorization are not subject to acquisition by occupancy against the interests of descendants connected to the burials.
- Descendant claims to burial goods may be proven by sufficient historical and anthropological evidence; a perfect chain of title is not required.
- Unjust enrichment requires, among other elements, a corresponding impoverishment not incurred through the claimant’s fault or at the claimant’s risk; deliberate, unauthorized conduct bars restitution.

## Conclusion

The court refused to treat burial artifacts as abandoned property and held that an unauthorized excavator acquired no ownership rights by removing funerary objects from graves; it also denied unjust enrichment because the excavator proceeded knowingly without proper authorization and therefore bore the risk of his expenditures.


Charrier v. Bell, 496 So. 2d 601 (La. Ct. App. 1st Cir. 1986)