Why should any injured party have to do the legwork? What’s wrong with punitive damages?
Hey, if a bank takes the possessions from your house illegally, you can pull up to the bank president’s house and haul off all you want in return.
Sauce for the goose and all that. 
I’m good with that. 
Then hang the bank president out to dry. Make him personally criminally and financially liable for any wrongful repossession, whether mistaken or intentional.
Corporate officers should face more personal liability for actions that harm innocent citizens. It’s offensive to me that all the officers of the financial companies that created the recession still have their personal assets. With so many foreclosures happening, the corporate officers and market traders who ended up financially better off after the crash should also have lost their houses, cars, investments, and their children’s college tuition funds.
To be honest, i’d be happy enough, from a moral and ethical point of view, if there were more circumstances where wronged parties had some broader societal support in being made whole, and in punishing the wrongdoers. I understand the logistical problems that might cause, but the principle isn’t completely out of the realm of the reasonable, IMO.
I don’t know. Who said there was anything wrong with them? In my own proposal, i specifically called for both restitution and punitive damages for the victim.
What about that worker’s safety? Sooner or later, a homeowner will be sleeping off a drunk, be awoken by foreclosure workers breaking in, and the intruders will die as a result. No criminal act will have occurred.
So, as a $9 worker, I hold the bank president’s freedom in my hand. He better come through with that raise, because I feel a “mistake” might happen otherwise.
So remove the possibility of a $9 worker being able to make a “mistake”. Instead of just handing someone a paper with an address on it, someone with “buck stops here” authority could venture out of his cushy office and go verify where the property is in person. Attach a signed and notarized notice to the house in a way that it can’t be removed without destroying it.
Better yet, make the procedure for foreclosure similar to an eviction – court order required, and a sheriff’s or police officer must be present to execute the order if the delinquent owners don’t turn the property over willingly. That would protect both the bank and the homeowners.
Something along these lines sounds like the best solution possible. Basically, make some high ranking public officials, and preferably some high ranking bank representative as well, legally responsible for any fuckups for foreclosing on the wrong house.
And even though it might not be the best solution, I would still love to see some laws on the books that would cover criminal negligence in the case of property destruction. And I’m a little shocked to find out that the only criminal negligence laws on the books seem to be those involving human lives and safety.
And for fuck’s sake, if it’s the repo guy’s fault for going to the wrong house, whether or not he makes $9.50 an hour, he should be held criminally responsible for that level of a mistake. And if it’s NOT his fault (if the bank gave faulty instructions, for example), then you hold the guy at the bank who gave the instructions criminally responsible.
But I agree that instead of making criminal negligence laws, at least change the laws that govern how foreclosures occur, and get more involvement from higher ranking people like local courts, law officers, and banking officials, etc. Some of you might be happy with a 99.999%… success rate but I am not. Until 100% of foreclosures are done correctly, the laws and procedures governing them are not as good as they could be. Period.
You know very well that the bank president’s not going to let that happen. It’s an incentive for him to put in procedures that make it very unlikely that such a “mistake” is made. Such as personally confirming the location.
That is the procedure for a foreclosure. These screwups happen because the repossession companies are under the impression the home has already been foreclosed on and the previous owners evicted.
[QUOTE=Doug K.]
And for fuck’s sake, if it’s the repo guy’s fault for going to the wrong house, whether or not he makes $9.50 an hour, he should be held criminally responsible for that level of a mistake.
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Why? Why should this be a crime? Is it a crime if you fuck up at your job?
Fucking up at my job doesn’t result in someone potentially losing all of his or her possessions or residence. If repossession and self-help in such cases is going to be legal at all then it should come with huge disincentives. People should prefer to refrain from self-help if there is any chance there might be a mistake.
Better yet, as suggested above, ban private repossession and self-help altogether and allow these things to happen only under the supervision of a sheriff or other high public official.
The number of repossessions may be so high that there aren’t enough sheriff’s deputies to supervise them.
Because, we all know that the police have never conducted a raid on the wrong house, knocked down the door and shot the confused homeowner. Never happens, the police always show up at the right house, they are infallible.
Frankly, if I’m going to have a guy knock on my door by mistake, I’d rather it be some dopey cleanout contractor than a guy with a gun on his hip.
Can you name any job where you face criminal sanctions because of property damage?
There is no indication that these are self-help cases. They are all cases where eviction proceedings were complete and the repo guys went to the wrong house.
Ya gotta start somewhere.
… this doesn’t seem like the right place.
It does to me. I don’t see any social value in letting people take someone else’s stuff when they aren’t there to object.
Should we eliminate all forms of repossession then? Should hotels be required to leave guests’ belongings in rooms if they forget to take them when they check out?
We can argue about the margins once we’ve agreed on the principle.
But in the hotel example, they don’t “repossess” guests’ property. They collect it and return it if they can.