The BUSKLAW Newsletter

In last month's post, we highlighted the story of the guy who purchased a vase from an uninformed seller at a Connecticut yard sale for $35. The vase turned out to be from the 15th century Chinese Ming dynasty, and it was auctioned off on  March 17 for over $700K . We discussed the contract doctrine of unilateral mistake that gives the seller no recourse and concluded that the application of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you") would lead to a different result.  As brought to my attention by the always informative ContractsProf Blog , it turns out that there's a somewhat similar "windfall" case (i.e., an unexpected financial benefit from getting something that is ostensibly worth little - or nothing)  involving the acquirer of someone else's assumed trash who, after applying some good old-fashioned mental elbow-grease, turned it into a treasure. And then applied the Golden Rule. But where did the Golden Rule come from? I