At roughly 7:14 PM on a Tuesday in March, the Client removed from the refrigerator one (1) lidded plastic container, of the sort typically associated with Thai restaurants of middling quality, upon which had been written — in block capitals, in black permanent marker, across the full diameter of the lid — the four-word phrase "DO NOT EAT. MINE." The container was empty, save for one (1) slightly oily paper napkin, which had been folded into a rough approximation of a swan, and a stray bean sprout that may or may not have originated with the pad thai in question. The Client retrieved the container from the refrigerator, held it aloft for a moment, said nothing for a longer moment, and then said something we are not at liberty to transcribe.
The Respondent — a fifteen-year-old, to whom we shall refer throughout as "Minor Defendant" in the interest of formality, though all parties are aware of his name and, increasingly, his character — was located in the adjoining room, which doubled as his bedroom, his entertainment center, and his place of business. When confronted with the empty container and with its label, the Minor Defendant asserted, without appearing to look up from the device in his hand, that he "hadn't seen it." Pressed on this point, he refined his testimony: he had "maybe seen it but didn't know it was, like, yours yours." Pressed further, he advanced a third theory of the case, namely that the container had been "pretty much empty already."
The Parties' Positions
The Client's theory was elegant and, we thought, sound. The container had been labeled. The label had been unambiguous. The contents had been appropriated. This constituted, she alleged, a textbook case of conversion — the wrongful exercise of dominion over another's chattel — aggravated by the further fact that the chattel in question had been her favorite thing in the refrigerator and she had been, she said, "looking forward to it all day." She sought damages in the amount of (a) the replacement cost of the pad thai, (b) the cost of the gasoline required to drive to the restaurant, and (c) a small additional sum for emotional distress, payable in the form of the Minor Defendant doing the dishes for a period of two weeks without complaint.
The Minor Defendant advanced three defenses, inconsistent with one another but pleaded, in the best traditions of the common law, in the alternative. First, he denied the act, as noted above. Second, he argued that the label had been ambiguous — who, after all, was "MINE"? The label did not say. He could not have known. Third, and most imaginatively, he argued that household food is, by long-standing custom, held in common by the residents of the household, and that a handwritten label on a container cannot defeat the default presumption of shared ownership. On this last point he cited no authority, because he had never read any, but he did reference, in passing, "how Communism works."
The Journal's Analysis
The Journal is obliged to note, with regret, that the Minor Defendant's third argument is not entirely without force. The law generally does not recognize a unilateral declaration, scrawled in marker on a plastic lid, as sufficient to create a bailment, a license, or any other formal property interest capable of surviving the assault of a hungry teenager. The labeled leftover occupies a genuinely ambiguous status within the household economy: it is personal property in intent and communal property in fact. Courts are unlikely to help.
The legal question, at bottom, is whether a marker and a lid are enough. They are not. They never have been. They never will be.
What the Client had was not a judgment. What the Client had was a grievance — legitimate, heartfelt, and, in our assessment, wholly unvindicable by any legal instrument presently available in her jurisdiction. The best the Journal could offer was a strongly worded letter addressed to the Minor Defendant and delivered to his bedroom by sliding it under the door. We drafted one. It was, if we say so ourselves, tremendous. It cited Blackstone. It was ignored.
Disposition
The matter settled, as many of our matters settle, over breakfast the following morning, when the Client informed the Minor Defendant that he would not be receiving a ride to his friend's house that afternoon and that, further, if he wanted pad thai so badly, he was welcome to order it himself, with his own money, of which he had none. The Minor Defendant did the dishes. Grudgingly. For three days. Then he stopped.
The Journal retains a photograph of the empty container in its permanent file. The label, we are told, is still legible.