Car theft?

[Jubbler]

If I loan my car to a friend to go to Walmart and back, he then takes my car and goes to places we didn't talk about, do I have a case for theft? Thanks for your help.

[marinepilot]

Short answer is No. You voluntarily loaned the person the car. If they go different places or return it late, you could try and ask them for gas money, but they didn't steal your car. Think if you loaned your friend $20 so he could buy food that night, but instead he buys beer, can you charge him with stealing? No again...

**Edit** By the way, Welcome to RP from the Florida Panhandle. Usually we ask our newest members to go to the New Member Introductions forum and start a thread telling us a bit about themselves.

[pac201]

Same short answer, no. Here at best it would be unauthorized use.

Btw, welcome to the site.

[Jubbler]

First off, thank you for the warm welcome and thank you for the responses. Second to the same comparison with money, if they wanted to borrow 20 bucks and I gave them 100 and they spent all 100 instead of just the 20 we had agreed upon wouldn't that be stealing 80 bucks? Is this the same?

[greg72982]

First off, thank you for the warm welcome and thank you for the responses. Second to the same comparison with money, if they wanted to borrow 20 bucks and I gave them 100 and they spent all 100 instead of just the 20 we had agreed upon wouldn't that be stealing 80 bucks? Is this the same?

Not here, that'd be civil. The vehicle thing could be unauthorized use, as stated earlier, but with money if you loan $100 out of your own free will to him with the expectation he will pay you back and he doesn't it is a civil claim, not criminal. The fact he only wanted $20 is really irrelevant.

[Jubbler]

Thanks again for reply.

[ChesCopPodz]

Here you'd be SOL and have to sue him to get it back. We don't have an "unauthorized use" statute. But a lot of states have the unauthorized use statutes, which is a lesser offense than auto theft.

[retdetsgt]

We have an unauthorized use, but it wouldn't apply here either. If we stop them and arrest them, it's your word against his as to what you said he could do with the car.

As a matter of courtesy, we will sometimes put out a "locate" on the car for you and if it's stopped, we will hold it at the scene for a short time and notify you to come get it, but once you hand the keys to someone, you're taking a personal risk.