Here’s a fun one - apparently in most Canadian provinces you can sue your KIDS for support. It is, like most of these a left over clause in a law but this woman is taking advange of it and giving it a shot.
The applicable statute is the Family Relations Act and the only applicable phrase I could find was: A child is liable to maintain and support a parent having regard to the other responsibilities and liabilities and the reasonable needs of the child.
Apparently there are similar laws in every province with the exception of Alberta. I think I need to move before my mother reads this story.
I remember reading about neighborhood outrage in Washington DC as a Chinese man was stalking pigeons in a local park and netting them for food. As far as I know in most cities there is no law against eating pigeons for consumption at home. I would assume it would be unsettling to watch someone walk around clubbing them in a public park, but I am actually curious as to whether it is legal everywhere, or just in DC?
No church involved, but otherwise this exact scenario took place in Stowe, Vermont about twenty-five years ago. It went to the state Supreme Court eventually, and ultimately the “farmer” lost, having to pay assessed actual and punitive damages.
I don’t think this law is bizarre, it’s just a little outdated and out-of-alignment with your personal value system.
With the strong welfare state in Canada, aged parents don’t need support from their adult children to save them from destitution, but it still doesn’t mean that parental-abandonment is a good thing, or the age-old unwritten social-contract exchanging support when they are young for support when they are old, shouldn’t be codified.
Public nudity is legal in New Zealand as long as it is not “sexually provocative”.
There was a recent high-profile case here about a man who lived in the countryside and liked to go out bicycle riding in the nude. Someone saw him, got upset, and raised a fuss with the police. Eventually they decided that, well, he wasn’t actually hurting anyone, he just liked riding in the nude. So the complaint was dismissed (I started to write “he got off” but fortunately I changed my mind).
Please tell me you have actually called the fire deparment repeadedly everytime a customer asks for water. I’d love to know the FD reacted; especially the supervisors.
I think about have the states in the US have similiar laws. In some cases it might still be on the booksk from the colonial era. My understanding is that it’s not so much parents sueing their kids as it is nursing homes and governments trying to get reimbursed for the cost of care in case where the elderly person has become a ward of the state. Often there the children in question having good reasons for “abandoning” their parents.
That’s actually technically legal in alot of places, not just NYS. It’s legal in Ontario (& the rest of Canada*?) as well. Many states have indecent exposure laws written so narrowly (ie applying soley to genitals & anuses) that a man could get away with wearing a cock sock & clentching his buttocks while all a woman has to do is have a full bush to be in compliance with the law. I wouldn’t want to try that out though.
I think California has similiar laws to Vermont; no state-wide ban on nudity unless there’s lewd conduct involved, but local muncipalities can enact their own ordinances. My parents live in the country and one of their neighbors had the habit of going for walks in either a g-string or a jock-strap (I’m not sure which) and she was told there wasn’t anything she could do about. I don’t know if he still does it.
*I’ve heard that the Criminal Code of Canada refers to “being nude in public without lawful excuse”, but defines neither what constitutes “nudity” or a “lawful excuse” leading to a court case where an appeals court ruled shoes count as clothing for legal purposes. Is any of that true?
US gun laws have exceptions for “antique firearms.” As I understand it, the term includes black powder guns, even those made recently. That might make you think of muzzle-loading flintlocks. It also means cap-and-ball six-shooters.
This isn’t exactly about “bizarre things that are legal”, but it came to mind when you mentioned this. Certain parts of the Corpus Juris Civilis - the “Code of Justinian”, from the late-Roman period - still have authority in South African law. (The pre-Napoleonic law of Holland, which was based on a revival of Roman law, was brought to South Africa by Dutch settlers. It has, of course, been in many parts replaced by English law and by subsequent statutes.) I have, in fact, read a judgment of the South African Supreme Court of Appeal which dealt with the question of whether a South African court had jurisdiction to try someone who had been abducted by the police from a neighbouring country without proper extradition proceedings; to answer this question, the court referred to the Justinian Code’s rules about how Roman provincial governors and judges had to deal with accused criminals who had fled to another province.
