Or more precisely, which fan is entitled to the $4,392,000 a collector paid for it? With stakes that high, a judge will decide.
On September 19, 2024, L.A. Dodgers player Shohei Ohtani became the first player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season, becoming the inaugural member of the “50-50 club,” when he drilled a homer into the outfield bleachers of LoanDepot Park in Miami.
Max Matus, 18, is the fellow in the red t-shirt in the video below, which shows Christian Zacek, in the black shirt, wrestling the ball away from Matus. A third fan, Joseph Davidov, also asserts a claim.
All three agreed, through their attorneys, the ball could be sold at auction, and it was. The lawsuit will determine who gets the money. Davidov argues he had the ball first, “but lost possession after being tackled by an unknown person moments later” (see story here). Matus insists Zacek stole the ball from him.
Just for fun, I’m going to play judge and jury here.
First of all, the ball is personal property. The original purchaser is the Miami Marlins (the home team always provides the game balls; see details here). Allowing fans to keep balls hit into the stands isn’t a gift; it’s part of what attracts people to attend games, so their ticket purchase is consideration for the right or privilege of keeping any ball they retrieve. It’s like buying a lottery ticket and hitting a jackpot. Thus, “title” or ownership of the ball passes to the fan when it goes into the stands.
They say “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” but that’s not the law. You can’t acquire title to personal property by stealing it from its rightful owner. There’s a well-known case on this topic, taught in law schools, involving the famous artist Georgia O’Keeffe and some stolen paintings (captioned O’Keeffe vs. Snyder, summarized here).
From the video, it’s clear there was a mad scramble for the ball. Whether it was loose until Zacek got it, or was taken from someone else, is a question of fact. Normally, the jury decides questions of fact and the judge rules on the law; but if a bench trial (i.e. nonjury trial) is selected by the parties, the judge also decides the factual issues.
This video doesn’t verify Davidov’s story, but there are ways to prove his case; other fan videos may surface, or witnesses may come forward. I’ll start with the issue between Matus and Zacek, and come back to Davidov farther below.
In the video, it appears to me that Matus had full possession and control of the ball, then Zacek used physical force to rip it out of his hands. If that’s the finding, then the ruling will be that Zacek acquired the ball by theft, and is entitled to none of the sale proceeds.
He can appeal this, but his chances of overturning a decision in Matus’ favor would be slim to none. Appellate courts generally confine themselves to reviewing the trial court’s rulings on the law, and will overturn a finding of fact only for insufficiency of evidence. That is, only if “no reasonable jury” could come to that factual conclusion based on the evidence presented. That’s not the case here; this video readily supports a finding that Zacek took the ball from Matus by force.
The law is clear: Possession is not nine-tenths of the law, or even one-tenth of the law, i.e. Zacek isn’t a 10% owner of the ball or its proceeds. As a thief, he’s entitled to nothing.
That brings me back to Davidov’s claim, and he may have a good claim, because another popular bromide — “finders, keepers” — isn’t true, either, in the courts. The concept originated in Roman law (details here), and came to us through English law, which a few years ago was articulated as, “Finders keepers, unless the true owner claims the article.”
If you drop your wallet in a parking lot, and a stranger picks it up, the wallet and its contents still belong to you, not the stranger. You don’t lose ownership or title of personal property by reason of having mislaid it. In the U.S., statutes decree that finders isn’t keepers, and lost property must be returned to its owner.
Thus, if money bags fall out of an armored truck because of an improperly secured door, any bystanders who pick up the spilled cash and don’t turn it over to authorities will go to jail if they get caught (see, e.g., story here).
Under this principle, if Davidov gained possession of the ball, but an unknown third party tackled him and knocked it loose, and he can prove this at trial, then Matus’s claim while superior to Zacek’s claim is inferior to Davidov’s claim.
Under finder’s law, Matus would be entitled to the ball if Davidov didn’t come forward to claim it, but since he did the question is whether he can show that he had possession of the ball and that was wrongfully deprived of it. It doesn’t matter that Matus isn’t the person who knocked it loose from Davidov’s possession.
There might well be a negotiated settlement whereby Davidov and Matus agree to split the proceeds in some fashion to resolve their respective claims. Certainly, Matus can argue at a minimum that he’s entitled to a reward for recovering the ball for Davidov.
If I’m the lawyer representing either of them, after watching the video, I wouldn’t negotiate with Zacek at all; I would take the view he doesn’t belong in the room. But it’s not out of the question that Matus and Davidov might pay him a nuisance settlement to go away, to avoid incurring litigation expenses.
On the question of possession, I don’t know what caselaw precedents out there with respect to mad scrambles for baseballs, or whether a judge might look for analogy to football rules regarding caught or incomplete passes, but if I were doing the fact-finding in this case, I would just apply common sense. It’s hard to describe precisely what constitutes possession, but I know it when I see it.