## Facts

- Sherman Hawkins, an inmate at Montana State Prison, escaped on July 12, 1997.
- Prison officials immediately packed Hawkins’s personal property, sealed and labeled the boxes with his name, and stored them in the prison storage room.
- Hawkins was apprehended and returned to prison on July 14, 1997, and placed in administrative segregation in the maximum security unit.
- After a disciplinary hearing, Hawkins was found guilty of escape and sanctioned (segregation, loss of good-time, and a reclassification recommendation); no order directed destruction of his personal property.
- Over the next 30 days, Hawkins repeatedly requested return of his property.
- In September 1997, officials allowed Hawkins to retrieve legal papers from storage and then informed him that, under prison policy, an escape meant his remaining property was treated as abandoned and would be destroyed or sold.
- The remaining items included a television, stereo, word processor, eyeglasses, and books, valued by Hawkins at about $2,290.
- Prison officials later destroyed or sold the remaining property.
- Hawkins filed a civil action seeking the value of the property and alleging constitutional violations; the district court dismissed for failure to state a claim on the theory that Hawkins abandoned the property by escaping.

## Issues

1. Whether the complaint stated a claim for relief where the district court treated Hawkins’s escape as a conclusive abandonment of his personal property.
2. Whether escape establishes only a rebuttable presumption of abandonment that can be overcome by timely reclamation before another acquires the property with intent to take title.

## Decision

- The Montana Supreme Court reversed the Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held that escape supports, at most, a rebuttable presumption of abandonment.
- The court concluded Hawkins rebutted any presumption by promptly and repeatedly requesting return of his property after being recaptured.
- The court noted the property remained boxed, labeled, and stored by prison officials, and no one had taken possession with intent to acquire title before Hawkins reasserted ownership.
- Because Hawkins plausibly retained a protectable property interest, dismissal at the pleading stage was improper; the merits of any constitutional violations were not finally resolved.

## Legal Principles

- Abandonment depends on intent to relinquish a right or interest permanently; evidence of abandonment creates a rebuttable presumption, not an irrebuttable rule.
- A former owner may rebut abandonment by reclaiming the property before another person legally takes possession with intent to acquire title.
- Government custody and safekeeping of property (boxing, labeling, storing) does not itself show intent by the government to claim ownership.
- A plaintiff who plausibly alleges a continuing property interest may proceed past Rule 12(b)(6) even if ultimate constitutional liability remains to be determined.

## Conclusion

The court held that an inmate’s escape does not conclusively extinguish ownership of personal property left at the prison; it creates only a rebuttable presumption of abandonment, which Hawkins plausibly overcame by timely reclaiming the property before anyone else took title, requiring reversal of the pleading-stage dismissal.


Hawkins v. Mahoney, 297 Mont. 98, 990 P.2d 776 (Mont. 1999)