Here’s where the story ends:
money.jpg

CLEVELAND – A contractor who found $182,000 in Depression-era currency hidden in a bathroom wall has ended up with only a few thousand dollars, but he feels some vindication.

The windfall discovery amounted to little more than grief for contractor Bob Kitts, who couldn’t agree on how to split the money with homeowner Amanda Reece.

It didn’t help Reece much, either. She testified in a deposition that she was considering bankruptcy and that a bank recently foreclosed on one of her properties.

And 21 descendants of Patrick Dunne — the wealthy businessman who stashed the money that was minted in a time of bank collapses and joblessness — will each get a mere fraction of the find.

“If these two individuals had sat down and resolved their disputes and divided the money, the heirs would have had no knowledge of it,” said attorney Gid Marcinkevicius, who represents the Dunne estate. “Because they were not able to sit down and divide it in a rational way, they both lost.”

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

7 replies on “Windfall Wall”

  3. I’m thinking that there must be more to this story. Because given the facts as stated, this is a pretty clear cut case. The money belongs to the owner of the building in which it was found, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter that a contractor found it.

    I have a law degree, though I don’t practice as an attorney (in part because I hate litigation). And this is one of the first things you learn in a first-year property course.

    The money should no sooner be the contractors than if the contractor found a shoebox under the homeowner’s bed with a thousand dollars in it, under the law at least.

    All that said, you’re right in a way that litigation is almost never worth it. I’ve worked on cases in the past where the litigants have spend far, far more on litigation then they would ever benefit had they won their case. It’s pointless and sad. Frankly, attorneys shouldn’t be party to it. But of course, attorneys are the real winners in the end, so they have little motivation to stop it.

  4. “And 21 descendants of Patrick Dunne…will each get a mere fraction of the find.”

    So, we’re dividing it at least 23 different ways, and we have to point out that EACH one gets a MERE FRACTION..?

  7. This wouldn’t even be an issue if the stupid contractor would have just quietly pocketed the money and did a bang up job on the work requested…

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