Shortly after they married, Mary and Jacob purchased a small house in a middle-class suburb of Kansas City. After they took poss
ession of the house, the couple was horrified to find a mountain of garbage left behind by the previous owners. Almost all the rooms were filthy, and there was clutter everywhere. Although furious, Mary and Jacob had little money to spend on lawyers and/or a cleaning service, thus the couple assumed the burden of cleaning the house themselves. While cleaning out the kitchen, Jacob took notice of the badly scratched-up kitchen furniture the previous owners had left behind. There was a small round table and four dull-looking chairs, each piece of furniture was made of an unusual dark brown wood. At first, Jacob didn’t think much of this furniture. It was odd-looking, and it didn’t really seem to belong in the kitchen. Jacob was ready to throw it out, but Mary suggested the couple keep the furniture so they could avoid spending what little money they had on buying new furniture for the kitchen. Clearly the furniture needed some mending, but the table and chairs did appear sturdy.
Thus, with a little sanding and some polish, the furniture could continue to be used. It took about a month, but the house was eventually cleaned-up, and the dark brown furniture set was properly sanded and polished. Once settled into their home, Mary and Jacob began the task of furnishing their empty rooms. With the dark brown furniture set in the kitchen accommodating their needs, the couple focused their attention on the other rooms of the house, but both Mary and Jacob intended to eventually replace the kitchen furniture with something more modern looking. Within a few months, however, the couple began looking at furniture for a nursery, so the task of replacing the kitchen furniture was soon forgotten.
As the years went by and Mary and Jacob’s family grew, the couple took steps to make their house child-safe, which included anchoring various pieces of furniture to the floor (or to the walls) in order to prevent them from sliding and/or tipping over—a problem that Mary and Jacob had to deal with frequently, given their overly-energetic kids. The dark brown table in the kitchen was one such item that the couple anchored to the floor using conventional floor anchors that they purchased inexpensively from a local hardware store. Note that four anchors were used to anchor the table to the floor, one anchor for each of its four legs. Each anchor was attached to the kitchen floor via an adhesive. By the time their oldest child became five, Mary and Jacob’s family had outgrown their small house, so the couple made the decision to sell their current home and move into a larger one.
Luckily, they were able to find a buyer rather quickly, so they immediately began packing their 2 belongings for the move. Uncertain what their needs would be in the new house, Mary and Jacob decided to take the dark brown furniture set with them. One day after the closing, the buyer’s attorney called Mary and Jacob demanding that the dark brown furniture set from the kitchen be returned to the small house immediately. Since the dark brown furniture set had been found by Mary and Jacob in the kitchen when they first moved into the small house and the dark brown table had been anchored to the floor, the buyer’s position was that the dark brown furniture set was to be sold with the house. Perplexed by this demand from the buyer, Mary and Jacob began to make some calls to various furniture dealers in the area. They soon learned that the dark brown furniture set that they had found in the kitchen as newlyweds was crafted by Shaker artisans using a rare and precious wood obtained from an extinct species of ebony tree. As a result, the dark brown furniture set was valued at about $50,000.
Question Do Mary and Jacob have to return the dark brown furniture set to the buyer? Why or why not?
