Steve912, I asked the question because there are businesses that clean out basements, attics, garages, etc. for the contents. There are businesses that demolish homes and barns too. How would the law view this?
No qualified legal advice here, just my take.
Those are two very different jobs. One, the "taking away"
IS the job; if you contract some work involving demolition
of existing structure, the "taking away" is an additional
service to the primary purpose of the contract (put in
a window, add a doorway, etc).
If you hire somebody to clean out contents of basement, attic,
garage, you reasonably expect him to take everything away and
leave you empty space. "Take all this stuff, make it go away."
Unless you specified something else in the contract, the
hauler can do whatever he wants, and it's his business. If
he finds a chest of gold, the reasonable man could (again,
IMO) say "you told him to take EVERYTHING, without qualification,
it's now his."
If you hire someone to tear down a wall, say, for installing
a window, and to take away the debris, the "reasonable man"
(IMO) would say "take away" meant "take way the broken drywall,
cut studs, nails and whatever other building material was
displaced in the process. If the contractor found Grandpa's
gold doubloon horde--or an old .38--inside the tear-down
area, I don't see the reasonable man thinking "oh, that's
part of the removed prior construction, so it's the contractor's
to do with, as he pleases.
Either way, sounds (to my non-lawyer-ish ear) like a dispute in
this area *might* go either way--civil suit, for contract violation,
or theft..
