Also known as: fructūs · fruits
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
The natural produce of land and animals. Ownership of such produce vests in the owner of the parent property upon separation from that property.
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Officers obtained a warrant to search a warehouse after a tip that stolen orchard equipment was hidden there. The warrant listed contraband along with any fructus discovered during the search. Agents located crates of apples that had been harvested from trees on the victim's farm and seized them as evidence of the theft.
A client delivered boxes of freshly picked grapes to his lawyer along with a weapon used in a robbery. The lawyer moved the grapes to a new storage facility to keep them from investigators. Because the grapes constituted physical fructus of the crime, the lawyer's actions exposed him to liability for obstruction.
Federal agents entered a farm without a warrant and removed several bushels of ripe peaches that were ready for market. The owner sued the agents for damages under Bivens, claiming the seizure of the fructus violated the Fourth Amendment even though no criminal charges were filed.
A telephone company compiled a directory listing local orchards and their seasonal fruit yields. A publisher copied the listings without permission. The court held that the raw data about fructus production lacked the originality required for copyright protection.
A farmer practicing plural marriage was prosecuted under federal law. Prosecutors introduced evidence of the fructus from his orchards to show the economic scale of the household and to establish the facts of cohabitation.
After an unwarned confession, officers located a hidden cache of walnuts that had been stolen from a neighboring grove. The court admitted the walnuts themselves because the physical fructus of the crime were not subject to suppression even though the statement was excluded.
A bona fide possessor acquires ownership of fructus by separatio, the moment the produce separates from the parent land or animal. The possessor must later account to the true owner for any unconsumed fruits.
Fructus naturales are the spontaneous products of land and animals. Fructus civiles are the rents, profits, and other civil revenues derived from the property rather than its natural growth.
A tenant acquires title to fructus only by perceptio, the act of gathering or harvesting them. Mere separation does not transfer title to the tenant.
…that failure to follow the new procedures requires inexorably the exclusion of any statement by the accused, as well as the fruits thereof. Such a strict constitutional specific inserted at the nerve center of crime detection may well kill the patient.[^maj-3] Since there is at this time a paucity of information and an…