AGO Opinion Topics: LARCENY

1. The crime of fraudulently obtaining public assistance must be charged under RCW 74.08.330 in the public assistance title. 2.  That crime may not be punished as a grand larceny, but only as a gross misdemeanor.

1.   A hunter who lawfully shoots a game animal acquires a vested legal right in such animal provided he continues to manifest an immediate intention to possess it by exercising actual physical possession and by tagging.  2.   Where a second hunter shoots and tags a dying animal bagged by another while the first hunter is attempting to reduce it to possession, the second hunter is guilty of larceny if all other elements of the crime are present.