not issued a royal decree absolving the perpetrator of taxes, they could have collected taxes on the guy who got the ball and then taxes on the guy who had the ball given to him. Through the miracle of multiple taxation, the IRS gets it all....)
Of course, the guy who has the ball can argue, if he chooses to return it, that it doesn't belong to him, and he's returning it to its owner, the guy who made it worth $250K. The IRS would have a hard time arguing some legally-defined version of "finders keepers", since it was obvious at any point whose ball it might be. (Then there's the question of whether the ball really belongs to the ballpark or one or the other team, and since most professional ballparks are quasi-governmentally owned, the local government may want a large cut...) Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639