In McAvoy v. Medina (1866), the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that a customer who finds a pocketbook sitting on a table inside a barbershop acquires no right to keep it. Because the item had been deliberately placed and then forgotten, it counted as mislaid property rather than lost property, and the shop owner, not the finder, was entitled to hold it for the true owner. That distinction between lost and mislaid property is why the case still turns up in nearly every first-year property course.
What Happened in the Barbershop
McAvoy walked into Medina’s barbershop and noticed a pocketbook on a table. He picked it up. Both men agreed it had probably been left by a previous customer, and they decided Medina would hold the pocketbook and the cash inside in case its owner came back.
Weeks went by. No one returned to claim it. McAvoy came back to the shop and asked Medina to hand the money over. Medina refused, taking the position that as the premises owner he had the stronger claim. McAvoy sued, and the case worked its way up to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
Lost Property Versus Mislaid Property
The whole case turned on one question: was the pocketbook lost or mislaid? Property law treats those two categories very differently, and the label decides who holds the item while the true owner is missing.
Lost property is something the owner parts with by accident. A wallet slips out of a pocket; a ring falls off during a handshake. The owner doesn’t know where it ended up and didn’t mean to put it down. Under the common-law rule traced to Armory v. Delamirie (1722), the finder of lost property has a claim good against everyone except the true owner. In that early English case, a chimney sweep’s boy who found a jewel was held to have rights superior to a goldsmith who tried to keep the stones. That principle became the baseline for finder’s-rights law.
Mislaid property is different. The owner deliberately sets the item down somewhere, planning to pick it up later, and then forgets. A phone left on a restaurant table, a bag placed on a store counter and walked away from — these are the classic examples. Because the owner chose that spot, they are more likely to retrace their steps and come back to that same place. Handing the item to whoever noticed it first would actually make recovery less likely.
The Court’s Ruling
The court ruled for Medina. A pocketbook resting on a table had clearly been placed there on purpose; nobody accidentally drops a pocketbook onto a table. The court concluded this was mislaid property, not lost property, and the finder therefore acquired no possessory rights at all.1H2O. McAvoy v. Medina
The opinion drew a sharp contrast with Bridges v. Hawkesworth, an 1851 English case in which a customer found a parcel of banknotes on the floor of a shop and was allowed to keep them. Notes scattered on the floor suggested they had fallen accidentally, making them lost property. The McAvoy court accepted that rule but distinguished the facts: a pocketbook set on a table is nothing like cash dropped on the ground.1H2O. McAvoy v. Medina
The court also relied on Lawrence v. The State, a Tennessee decision that had already drawn the same line. That court held placing a pocketbook on a table and forgetting to pick it up is not “losing” it in the legal sense. The McAvoy court adopted that reasoning and denied McAvoy any claim to the money.1H2O. McAvoy v. Medina
What the Shop Owner Actually Gets
Winning the case did not mean Medina could pocket the money. When mislaid property ends up with a business owner, the law treats that person as a bailee: someone temporarily entrusted with another person’s belongings. The shop owner holds the item. The shop owner does not own it.
A bailee has a duty to take reasonable care of the property. For a shopkeeper holding a forgotten item at no charge, the standard is modest, but it still means keeping the property safe and not converting it to personal use. If the premises owner is careless with the item or hands it over to the wrong person, the true owner can sue for its value.
The custody is temporary. The premises owner holds the property until the true owner comes back. If nobody ever does, unclaimed-property laws eventually take over: every state has some form of escheatment statute that requires holders of unclaimed property to turn it over to the state after a dormancy period, commonly running between three and five years. The state then acts as custodian, and the true owner or their heirs can usually claim the property indefinitely.
Why the Case Still Matters
The rule McAvoy v. Medina announced is intuitive and easy to apply: if you find something that looks like it was placed somewhere on purpose, you don’t get to keep it. The business where it was left does, at least until the true owner shows up.
The practical effect is that businesses function as collection points for forgotten belongings. A customer who leaves a jacket at a restaurant can return to that restaurant and ask for it. If the law instead handed the jacket to whichever stranger spotted it first, the original owner would have almost no chance of recovery.
Courts still apply the lost-mislaid distinction when disputes come out of hotels, airports, taxis, and retail stores. The physical context of where and how an item was found remains the main evidence for classification. An item resting in a logical, deliberate spot points toward mislaid property and the premises owner’s superior claim. An item found in an unlikely or random location suggests an accidental drop, which triggers the traditional finder’s rule from Bridges v. Hawkesworth. The line is not always obvious, but McAvoy v. Medina gave courts the framework for drawing it.
One boundary is worth flagging. The lost-mislaid distinction does not decide every finder’s dispute. Property that was intentionally abandoned belongs to whoever claims it; items embedded in the ground generally belong to the landowner; and treasure trove is handled inconsistently from state to state. McAvoy v. Medina answers the specific question of what happens when a customer picks up an item another customer forgot inside a business. Within that lane, its rule has held for more than 150 years.