[jfoutz]

I am not a lawyer, I'm definitely not your lawyer. Trespassing and possibly theft, I think. Theft includes moving stuff without the owners permission. so if I ,say, have a tow truck and move a car across the street without the owners consent, I'm a thief.

I only know this because a friend talked about a case where they rotated a car in-place, and there was a question about is that theft? its center of mass is still where they left it, so it wound up not being theft. Moving furniture in a house is a weird one. Probably leans on ill intent, moving a chair to block a door seems like it's pointed to giving the owner a hard time. moving a chair to perform cpr has much purer motives.

So anyway, there's my ill-informed view.

[benmmurphy]

I thought in common law countries theft required you to have the intent to permanently deprive the victim of the property. this is why there are separate statutes to cover stealing cars because people just claimed they were taking it temporarily.