More on the Lorton... or Lorton hears a Who ?

Paul Heinrich
Sat Jan 30 00:18:23 EST 2010

In
http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2010-January/060468.html ,
Richard Kowalski wrote:

"I find the comments amusing. It's pretty obvious
that the rock belongs to the land owner, not the
doctors. I just wonder if it dawned on them
themselves or if someone contracted them about
this. I'm not even suggesting one of the dealers
mentioned in the article contacted the owner
about this, but I wouldn't be surprised if some
hunter contacted them to advise them of their
rights..."

When the fall was first reported, it struck me as being strange that
the doctors should to be claiming to be the owners when they
likely were only renting it.

In a similar vein, I noted that a person or two, who sold Park Forest
meteorites to collectors said that they found their Park Forest
meteorites in the street. In such a case, the real owners of those
meteorites would be the city of Park Forest. Nobody seemed to
question their ownership of their meteorites at that time.

In
http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2010-January/060498.html ,
Greg Stanley about the "Hodges Meteorite Strike (Sylacauga
Aerolite)" wrote:

"On December 1, 1954, the day after Ann Hodges
was struck, he discovered a second fragment of the
meteorite in the middle of a dirt road. McKinney
was able to sell his rock to the Smithsonian for
enough to purchase a small farm and a used car."

Although at that time, people failed to pay any attention to him
having found it in a dirt road. If this dirt road was a county road,
it seems like it really belonged to the county government. If it
was a private dirt raod, it would belong the landowner, whose
raod the land was on. It seemed like in this case, McKinney got
away with "finders keepers".

I have always wondered about the case of a meteorite hitting a
house or landed on a property, for which the "owner" was still
paying off his or her mortgage. In such a case, would the mortgage
company have partial claim to the ownership of the meteorite and
debris from the impact? Would it have a say in how the meteorite
was either sold or donated and a share of the profit from any
sale of it?

Yours,

Paul H.