State v. Boyd
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Citation treatment has not been reviewed for this case. The notes below come from the citation graph and the Minnesota Revisor's amendment records, not from a review of how later courts treated this decision.
(as of 9/30/2026)
Last cited by a Minnesota appellate court in 1903, among the opinions in this site’s citation index.
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Cases that cite this one
3 later published cases cite this decision.
- State v. McCarty (N.D. 1921)
- State v. Hoshaw (Minn. 1903)
- Fruit Dispatch Co. v. Murphy (Minn. 1903)
This list shows which later cases cite this one. It does not say how they treated it, and no review of that has been done. Not a substitute for Shepard’s or KeyCite — verify before relying.
Opinion of the Court
To render the finder of .lost property guilty of larceny in appropriating it to his own use, if is fiecessary that he found it “under circumstances which gave him knowledge or means of inquiry as to the true owner.” Pen. Code, § 425. This was so at common law. State v. Levy, 23 Minn. 104. It is not necessary that the finder should know who the owner is, but he must have such means of inquiry on that subject as to give him reason to believe that, with reasonable effort on his part, the owner will be found.
In' his instructions to the jury the learned trial judge entirely omitted this essential element, having repeatedly instructed them, in substance, that if defendant found the money on the floor, and picked it up with the intention of appropriating it to her own use, she was guilty of larceny. The evidence as to the circumstances under which she says she found the money would have fully justified the jury in finding that defendant had “knowledge or means of inquiry as to the owner,” but under the charge of the court no such question was submitted to them.
For this error a new trial must be^granted.
Order reversed.
Case-law data current through September 30, 2026. Source: CourtListener bulk data.