Wow, this brought out the worst in some people. What are you all talking about, ‘suing him’, ‘he’s a fraud’?
Hiding a treasure is fun and mysterious. It belongs to him. He can give it away or not as he likes. There’s no legal contract between him and any of us. He can take it back any time he likes. It could be real or not. Y’all didn’t pay to join the search. If you think he’s mean for giving us a million dollar treasure hunt, go find another hobby.
As for the 5 people who died, that’s a tragic shame. Every year some people decide to go off into the wilderness despite having no skill or knowledge about how to be safe in the wilderness. It’s no more his fault than the people who die panning for gold in the wilderness or climbing mountains they don’t know how to climb.
If nobody gave him valuable consideration in money or barter for the poem or the right to search for the treasure, I can’t see that he’s on the hook for anything.
presumably people paid money for their copies of the book with the poem in it
Well, dang nagit, looks like I was had twice.
Does he? or doesn’t he?
Only his proctologist knows for sure.
Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin’ home every day
Beatin’ the hot old dusty way to the California line
Across the desert sands they roll, gettin’ out of that old dust bowl
They think they’re goin’ to a sugar bowl, but here’s what they find
Now, the police at the port of entry say
“You’re number fourteen-thousand for today”
Oh, if you ain’t got the do re mi, folks, you ain’t got the do re mi …
Legally, that’s a bit dodgy. (Quick disclaimer that I’m not a lawyer, and that nothing I say should be construed as legal advice.) There’s a good argument that he formed a unilateral contract: If you find the treasure, you’ll be granted legal ownership of it. While a unilateral contract can be unilaterally revoked, you can’t intentionally allow people to believe and act on the impression that it is still in effect.
Relying on a fraudulent promise when making a decision is called detrimental reliance, and the reasonable costs of such a decision can be held against the person who made the fraudulent claim. Unreasonable decisions, on the other hand, cannot. (For example, if there’s a $500 reward for a lost dog, and I see him on my walk to work, it might be reasonable to miss the first hour of my shift to catch the dog. It would not be reasonable for me to chase the dog onto the freeway.)
In this case, the promise was over a million dollars in gold and jewels. While I can’t imagine he’d be liable for any unreasonable risks taken, reasonable expenditures of time and money could be viewed as being the result of detrimental reliance. (Once again, I’m not a lawyer, if you need legal advice, treasure-based or otherwise, speak to a licensed attorney.)
Presumably he’d check it occassionally to see if it was still there. Being tailed by Ninja-Rangers all the time would get old.
Am I the only one who’d never even heard about this whole thing until he made the recent announcement?
Hmmm… That’s exactly what a suddenly wealthy person from “back East” would say.
It’s the American way!
Welp, I assume you’re joking, but my first ever encounter with overzealous police officers was when I was 12 walking with a friend in downeast Maine. A cop car appeared and we were stopped and patted down on the hood of the car with cruisers passing by asking if they needed help.
We had picked up a T-square that had been left frozen in the snow by a completed snack shack on a school athletic field. We got community service under - I shit you not - Maine’s “Finders-Keepers” law, under which you could* apparently be cited if you “picked up a quarter and didn’t report it”
*no idea if it’s still on the books, that was in the early 90s and the youth officer never made us show up for service.
Joseph sez ‘Hold my diet coke’.
I mean I’m not trying to victim blame here but did you even declare yourself to be scavenger hunt combatants ?
The finder from “back east”? Don’t worry – his girlfriend in Canada confirmed that, yes, he had found it
Buuurrrrrp!
Just to be clear, I am liking:
And not
That story is impressively bad.
the friends you made along the way were inside you all the time
Eww
I am the treasure Piñata
