Property of the aircraft operator
who is also responsible for the aircraft maintenance, well in this country anyrate.
I know that one goes nowhere by threatening to hold log books against unpaid maintenance work, better to use a workmans lien.
who pays for replacing and searching records when the maintence dept looses them ?
surely that would be the person who is caring for the books at the time, unless there was a placard such as seen at vehicle garages, 'vehicles stored at owners risk"
most of these records are backed up on hard disk, but I would venture that in an extreme case where extensive time-life part replacement ensued because of record loss, then the maintenance operators 'Hanger keepers liability' would be proceeded against.