Opinion ID: 739314
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Legal Bundle of Rights

Text: 28 We begin with the proposition that the concept of property rights should be given a broad interpretation for the purposes of the mail fraud statute. See United States v. Loney, 959 F.2d 1332, 1336 (5th Cir.1992); Murphy, 836 F.2d at 253. Indeed, this Court has noted that property may be defined as something of value. See Loney, 959 F.2d at 1336 (citing McNally, 483 U.S. at 358, 107 S.Ct. at 2880-81). Supreme Court precedent also supports this view. See McNally, 483 U.S. at 356, 107 S.Ct. at 2879-80 (noting that the phrase, any scheme or artifice to defraud, must be interpreted broadly insofar as property rights are concerned); Carpenter, 484 U.S. at 26-27, 108 S.Ct. at 320-21 (holding that the Wall Street Journal possessed a property right in the exclusivity of confidential business information). 1 29 More specifically, courts define property as a legal bundle of rights that one possesses in connection with a particular object. See Brotherton v. Cleveland, 923 F.2d 477, 481 (6th Cir.1991). Included in this bundle of property rights are the rights to possess, use and dispose of a particular article. See Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 435, 102 S.Ct. 3164, 3175-76, 73 L.Ed.2d 868 (1982). Necessarily encompassed within the right to use and dispose of an object is the right to control that object--and in the case of licenses, the right to control their issuance. See Bucuvalas, 970 F.2d at 945 (noting that the city of Boston had a property right in its ability to control the issuance of liquor licenses). When we say that we own something, one of the things that we mean is that we can determine what to do with it. We can either keep it or transfer it to someone else. And we can choose those persons to whom we will transfer it. Granberry, 908 F.2d at 280. Indeed, Carpenter itself supports the position that the right to control is included in the bundle of rights known as property, for in that case the Supreme Court held that the defendants defrauded the Wall Street Journal of its right to control the disclosure of confidential business information. See 484 U.S. at 28, 108 S.Ct. at 322. 30 Louisiana's interest in video poker licenses fits squarely within the above interpretation of property rights. The Video Poker Law demonstrates that Louisiana zealously sought to protect its right to control the licenses. In particular, the Act mandates that a person seeking to obtain a license must apply to the Video Gaming Division for approval and must meet certain suitability criteria set forth in the Act. See La. R.S. 33:4862.10 (recodified at La. R.S. 27:310). We see no relevant difference between the Wall Street Journal's right to restrict the pre-publication release of confidential business information and Louisiana's right to choose the persons to whom it issues video poker licenses. As the Third Circuit noted in Martinez, 905 F.2d at 714, the Journal lost the intangible right to disseminate confidential information in the manner in which it pleased. Similarly, because of the Appellants' fraudulent scheme, Louisiana was stripped of its right to bestow the video poker licenses on those parties meeting its criteria.