## Facts

- Plaintiffs owned land in the Davis Swamp area of Wilton, Connecticut.
- Defendant, a metal-detector hobbyist, believed a fragment of an equestrian statue of King George III might be on plaintiffs’ land.
- Defendant knowingly entered plaintiffs’ private property without permission to search for artifacts.
- Using a metal detector, defendant located a statue fragment embedded about ten inches below the soil, excavated it, and removed it.
- Plaintiffs learned of the find only after reading a newspaper account, after the fragment had been removed.
- Defendant agreed to sell the fragment to the Museum of the City of New York, which held it pending resolution of the dispute.

## Issues

1. Whether a finder who knowingly trespasses onto private land acquires a superior right to possession of an object found on, in, or under the land as against the landowner.
2. Whether the object should be treated as lost, mislaid, or abandoned property, and whether that classification determines the parties’ relative rights.

## Decision

- The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed judgment for the plaintiffs.
- The court held that, except for trivial or merely technical trespass, a trespassing finder does not obtain superior rights to property found on, in, or under another’s land.
- Because defendant’s entry was knowing and purposeful, his finder claim could not defeat the landowners’ superior possessory claim.
- The court affirmed on trespass-based grounds rather than the trial court’s reliance on a “mislaid property” classification.

## Legal Principles

- A finder’s usual priority (good against all but the true owner) is limited when the find results from deliberate, non-trivial trespass.
- As between a landowner and a wrongful entrant, the landowner has a strong presumptive claim to items found on, in, or under the land, including objects embedded in the soil.
- Traditional “lost/mislaid/abandoned” categories may be indeterminate for very old, intentionally concealed, or otherwise historically remote objects; relative title can be resolved without pinpointing the original depositor’s intent.
- Courts may decide only the parties’ relative rights to possession without determining absolute ownership against absent or hypothetical claimants.

## Conclusion

The court ruled that intentional, non-trivial trespass bars a finder from claiming superior rights to an embedded object discovered on another’s land, and it awarded possession to the landowners without relying on uncertain lost/mislaid/abandoned classifications.


Favorite v. Miller, 176 Conn. 310, 407 A.2d 974 (Conn. 1978)