United States v. Peter

• Citation: 178 F. Supp. 854
• Decision Date: 27 November 1959
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 8446.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Mrs. Theodore PETER, Ernest R. Baron, Stanley A. Baron, Mrs. Hazel Baron, Mr. and Mrs. John E. Cleland, Mrs. Rosa Fauntleroy, John H. Lemmon and/or Lemmon's Mattress Works, Estate of Emily Baron, and John Doe, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana

178 F. Supp. 854

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Mrs. Theodore PETER, Ernest R. Baron, Stanley A. Baron, Mrs. Hazel Baron, Mr. and Mrs. John E. Cleland, Mrs. Rosa Fauntleroy, John H. Lemmon and/or Lemmon's Mattress Works, Estate of Emily Baron, and John Doe, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 8446.

United States District Court E. D. Louisiana, New Orleans Division.

November 27, 1959.

Lloyd C. Melancon, Asst. U. S. Atty., New Orleans, La., for the United States.

Stanley A. Baron, New Orleans, La., for Mrs. Theodore Peter, Ernest R. Baron, Mrs. Hazel Baron, the Estate of Emily Baron and S. A. Baron.

Guy L. Deano, Jr., New Orleans, La., for Mr. and Mrs. John E. Cleland.

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, District Judge.

The setting of this drama is the Lemmon Mattress Works, Hammond, Louisiana. Miss Emily Baron, a local recluse, died in 1957 at the age of 82. A year later her mattress, after being locked up in her room since her death, is sold and sent to the Mattress Works for renovation. After the mattress ticking is removed and the cotton contents processed through the chopping machine, they are placed in the deodorizer box. There the cotton is subjected to an air blast which blows into the air $22,200 in gold certificates.

Emily Baron was one of three children of Lucian Sebastian Baron, a wealthy resident of south Louisiana. Mr. Baron died in 1928. Up to the time of his death he was taken care of by his spinster daughter, Emily. A short time after her father's death, Emily moved in with her brother in his family home near New Orleans. She bought a mattress, the mattress in suit. She used the mattress in her brother's home until 1932 when she and her brother's family moved to Covington, Louisiana. She took the mattress with her.

Emily had built on her brother's acreage in Covington a separate house for her occupancy 30 feet from the home in which her brother and his family lived. In addition to the usual locks on the doors of this house, Emily also had a special lock placed on the door of her bedroom, for it was in that bedroom she kept the mattress.

Emily seldom left her little house and she allowed no one to enter her bedroom except she be present. She ordered her clothes by catalog and kept dormant bank accounts in several banks. As the years went by, Emily gradually lost her sight until at the end she was totally blind. On her death she left no will. Her bedroom was searched and $26,000 in Government bonds and $2,000 in cash was found in scattered places around the room. No one looked in the mattress.

Emily's legal heirs, one set of claimants here, were judicially placed in possession of all property of which she died possessed. In disposing of her property of little value, her mattress was sold for $2.50 to Mr. and Mrs. John E. Cleland, another set of claimants in these proceedings. It was the Clelands who had the mattress picked up from the bedroom of Emily's old house and brought to the Mattress Works. They never saw their purchase. At the Mattress Works the mattress ticking was stripped off and the cotton contents processed as heretofore described. The gold certificates were found by Mr. John H. Lemmon, in charge of Lemmon's Mattress Works. Mr. Lemmon refused to make a claim for the gold certificates. He testified that they do not belong to him and that he does not want them.

The United States has brought this interpleader action,¹ claiming the gold certificates, but agreeing to pay the rightful owner thereof their face value. See 31 C.F.R. 53.1. Only the heirs of Emily Baron and the Clelands have made a claim. The Clelands originally contended that when they purchased the mattress for $2.50, ownership of the $22,200 in gold certificates contained therein was transferred to them. When it appeared that this contention was obviously without merit,² the Clelands decided that the gold certificates were in fact a treasure trove, and that, since the treasure was found in their property, it belonged to them. As authority for this lately conceived contention they cite LSA-Civil Code, Article 3423.³ The heirs of Emily Baron rely on LSA-Civil Code, Article 3422,⁴ maintaining that the certificates were merely lost chattels belonging to their Aunt Emily and that, as her heirs, they own them.

The law of treasure trove has been the subject of much exhilarating conjecture but very little use. Under the early English common law, treasure belonged to the finder. 1 Bl.Comm. (Cooley's 4th ed. 1899) 296. The king soon took care of this detail, however, by promulgating a statute declaring that all treasure belonged to the royal sovereign. 4 Edw. I, c. 2, 1 Pick.Stat. at L. 112 (1276). No subsequent sovereign has seen fit to have the law changed, so even today discovered treasure belongs to the monarch. See Emden, The Law of Treasure Trove, Past and Present, 42 L.Q.Rev. 368, 379 (1926).

The Code Napoleon, 1804, Article 716, on which Louisiana Civil Code is largely based, provides that: "The ownership of a treasure belongs to the person who finds it * * *." But that same article provides further that: "A treasure is a thing hidden or buried in the earth, on which no one can prove his property, * * *." The treasure trove article in the LSA-Civil Code, Article 3423, is but a restatement of the Code Napoleon. While the language may be garbled to some extent in translation, it is clear that under Louisiana Civil Code as well as under the Code Napoleon...