On the Slope Again

Here’s a question I saw posed about an online news story this week: Suppose a businessman buys the contents of a storage locker that are being sold at auction, which happens every month in America when people stop paying their locker rental fees and ignore notices to do so or to clean out their belongings. In this case, let’s suppose that the seizure and auction were legally conducted; no one was swindled into giving up their possessions, the storage company gave the owners all of the time required by contract and law to pay up, and even notified the owners of the auction so they could attend and buy everything back. Does the man who acquired the items at auction have any responsibility to return them to the original owners, or does he have the right to sell his legally-obtained property as he sees fit?

Before you answer that question you might want to consider this case from the Chicago Sun-Times website. According to this report, a man who routinely buys abandoned storage locker contents was doing just that in 2006 when he came upon a lot that included the funeral flag, dog tags, medals, gold star banner, photographs and other memorabilia of the first U.S. servicewoman killed in Afghanistan. At this point the story gets a little murky; the purchaser says he attempted to make contact with the family about returning the items and they never replied; the family does not dispute this, but a non-profit group established in the late Marine’s name says they want the memorabilia and the purchaser has declined their offers for it. Meanwhile, the purchaser (who has violated no laws whatsoever) is being excoriated in the media and flamed everywhere online that this story appears…

Now, granted that the articles obtained in this particular auction have a high emotional meaning to the family, facts of the case do appear to be that these items were left in a storage locker for several years (from 2002 to 2006) and then abandoned after several billing notices, a seizure notice, an auction notice an so on; it’s also clear that the purchaser isn’t refusing to return them to the family, just to do as a third-party group is asking him to do. What makes this case interesting (at least to me) is the issue of where do we draw the line? A lot of what ends up being auctioned off from storage lockers probably has sentimental value to someone, but self-storage companies aren’t charities, and expecting them to continue providing a service you’re not paying for is ridiculous. For that matter, so is asking someone who purchased goods through such an auction to simply give you items they bought and paid for. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine anyone who wouldn’t want to return a dead servicewoman’s burial flag and decorations to her family…

So where do we draw that line? At what point is something so important, holy or sacred that possession of it should supersede the laws of property ownership and liability, and who gets to make that decision? It’s another one of those questions I’m really grateful I don’t have to answer personally; I’m just going to be a weasel here and suggest that anything that is of huge sentimental value to you and can be stored in a single file box is probably something you should not put in self-storage in the first place…

And if you do, make sure you pay the rent on time!