Hello all, I'm asking about a situation at work my dad told me about the other day.
My dad works for the city government of a small town here in Iowa. As part of his job, he manages renting city venues to various groups. On Saturday, a wedding rented one of the city venues for their reception. Their reservation ended at midnight, and a city worker came in at 4am Sunday to clean before a different group's reservation began at 9am. This worker found that the wedding had not cleaned or removed their items, including table linens, beer kegs, and a refrigerator full of leftover food (plus lots of other things).
He called my dad, who came out and with a couple other city workers spent the whole morning loading all their stuff into trucks and moving it to be stored in the garage at their office. As they were leaving with the last load, the groom showed up. He asked if he could go get all their stuff right then, but my dad responded with no, since the office was closed (being Sunday) and none of the workers there were supposed to be working, but they had had to come in to make sure the venue was ready for the reservation at 9. Being my dad, however, he added that he would not release the items until the groom had paid the extra fees associated with them coming in to clean up and store everything.
Up until this last bit, I'm pretty sure everything was legal. However, from reading this sub, I'm under the impression that only special cases (like tow companies) are allowed to keep other people's possessions until payment has been made. In general, you have to give it back and then sue them for payment. The wedding group did have to sign an agreement with the city to rent the venue, but I asked my dad and he specifically stated that there is not a clause in that agreement that gives the city the right to do this. Is it legal in this case to hold someone else's items until they make payment?
Thank you!
Submitted June 06, 2017 at 01:53AM by Rae_III http://ift.tt/2swFt9J legaladvice
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