[M1573RMU74710N]

In those cases presumably there's some sort of rental/lease agreement though, right?

They can go to the Sherrif and say "This person signed a legal document stating I gave them X equipment with Y serial number. They have not returned/paid for it in the allotted time...come with me to their property; if we find it and they don't have another legal document signed by me stating otherwise, obviously they don't have the right to posses it".

Isn't it a little different here? Here it's disputable who the property belongs to, and in what context this person has the property. Wouldn't a criminal charges of some kind have to be made instead of the process say, a car dealership goes through to repossess a car?

Either charge the thief and recover it from them, or investigate the person for possessing stolen property and if it turns out to be stolen, then returning it to the rightful owner?

Aren't repossession agents bound by some constraints as well? Is rent-a-center allowed to surreptitiously record it's customers in case they don't return stuff (without notifying them and/or getting a signed waiver?).

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm just curious how all this stuff works legally.

[Daniel_Newby]

It's my understanding that you can take your purchase records to a court, file a complaint against an unnamed party, provide evidence about the current location of the property, and use that to get police intervention (for which the sheriff's department probably charges a fee). This process is needed because you owe the public a duty not to breach the peace, for instance, by breaking down a door and prying the property out of someone's hands.

"Wouldn't a criminal charges of some kind have to be made instead of the process say, a car dealership goes through to repossess a car?"

Unless you want vengeance, worry about getting the property back, not about the crime.

Suppose the buyer of a bass boat dies while it is stored in a rented garage. No crime has been committed, but it will take a court order and a deputy with a bolt cutter for the repo man to get his hands on it.

"Is rent-a-center allowed to surreptitiously record it's customers in case they don't return stuff (without notifying them and/or getting a signed waiver?)."

No, that would violate the implied warranty of fitness for purpose of the merchandise.

[M1573RMU74710N]

> Suppose the buyer of a bass boat dies while it is stored in a rented garage. No crime has been committed, but it will take a court order and a deputy with a bolt cutter for the repo man to get his hands on it

Sure, but again in that case isn't there a record of the person dying, the storage rental agreement, a will or lien or something saying "The boat is now property of X?".

What I'm getting at is in the case of theft, there's no evidence that the property wasn't just given to the other person. How do you make a complaint to the court without that? If I can do that, I'd like to try next time someone steals something, which unfortunately happens regularly in the town I live.

I'm not a lawyer, but as a musician I've had some experience with getting stolen property back, and my experiences always involved filing a police report for the stolen stuff, and then it's recovered as part of the investigation of that. I mean, for example when my friend's guitar turned up in a pawn shop, he went to the police...told him about how his guitar was stolen and they looked up the report, etc...then the police in charge of that went to the pawn shop and got his guitar back. When my friend's bike was stolen, he got it back when the police arrested the person who stole it (he was caught shortly after stealing another bike).