This ain’t no court of law. We don’t need to presume anybody’s stinking innocence.
Yes, yes, everything you say is just pocket lint and not legal argument. Now stop being Sailboat.
I think changing the law would turn into a quagmire.
What would define due diligence? How many times does the person transcribing the order have to recheck the address? What devices are considered reliable and what devices are not? What about when house numbers aren’t available or are hard to read? Can you ask a neighbor for the correct address? Does this only apply to foreclosures, or does it also apply to contractors, delivery men, cops and party guests? Who gets arrested, the foreman, the banker, the workers, or all 3? Does this mean the guys doing menial labor have to be able to read and understand foreclosure documentation, and verify the address personally?
I can’t help thinking of this analogy. I go to the store and come back out to where I think I parked my car. Sure enough a car that looks like mine is right there. Now when I say looks like mine I mean same year, make and model but if I were to look closely at it, it would be obvious it’s not mine. Maybe it has Wyoming plates rather than Colorado plates. Now since it is not my car my fob doesn’t unlock it so being direct, I take a rock and smash a window to unlock “my” car. I get in and try to start the car which of course fails. In my anger I grab the GPS off the windshield and smash it.
Have I broken any laws?
- At least once
- Legal description and plat sheets or a clear address either on the mailbox, curb or house.
- See #2, legal description and plat sheet.
- No
- It applies to anyone who accesses the owners house without permission so that when SWAT breaks down your door and says, “Oops. Sorry.” then yes they fucked up.
- The person in-charge on site and their underlings are arrested as accessories. In this case, if the possessions were not permitted to be destroyed (still to be determine) but destroyed anyways you arrest the person who made that decision to sell/destroy the goods.
- Not all of the documentation just be able to read an address and translate it to the proper house. Or read plat sheet which is really not that difficult. If you can’t do either then you are not qualified for your job.
Damn that was easy.
Will this craziness affect the bank’s bottom line? People are piling on the hate (YELP page)
[QUOTE=Yelp review]
They did not foreclose on my house this week. Considering I don’t have a mortgage with them I consider this great service.
[/QUOTE]
Searching “The First National Bank of Wellston” brings up nothing but discussions about what dicks they are. Will this eventually blow over and leave the bank no worse for wear?
But eviction takes 30 days after posting the “Get the fuck out” notice on the door. According to the victim she was gone 2 weeks so that doesn’t add up. Also I’m not the one confusing possession with ownership. I’m the one (in fact one of the few) in this thread saying that even though the bank legally possessed the items they never legally owned them and that’s where the crime occurred. Other people in this thread seem to thin the taking possession and selling/destroying them (ownership) are not two separate issues.
Once again, it was the wrong house. It doesn’t matter how long the victim was gone because she wasn’t the one evicted.
The notice was given well over 30 days before the bank arrived.
It was given to the correct house.
When the bank’s representatives arrived, they believed that the owner, having had the benefit of much more than the 30 day notice, had left, abandoning whatever possessions remained.
I’m not going to play semantic games over the definition of “mistake”. You play whatever games you like over “honest” or “negligent” or whatever else gets your rocks off, but know that “honest mistake” isn’t a legal term that is somehow negated by using the term “negligent”.
Feel free to start advocating for criminal punishment for negligent damage to property. I’m just stating that by and large that’s not the legal standard.
Did you know the GPS wasn’t yours when you broke it? If the answer to that is yes, then it’s a crime. If the answer to that is no, then it’s not. I’m not sure how many different ways to explain it, or how many different hypotheticals need to be answered before it sinks in.
The law deals with details similar to this all the time. But if I were writing the law, here’s how your questions would be answered:
What would define due diligence? Checking the street address, if one was visible; if one wasn’t, checking the addresses of neighboring houses for consistency; comparing the house’s location with its location on plat maps.
How many times does the person transcribing the order have to recheck the address? None. A copy of the deed should suffice if it has the address.
What devices are considered reliable and what devices are not? At this point in time, no devices are reliable. That may change, but that change should be a matter of law.
What about when house numbers aren’t available or are hard to read?
Plat maps and legal descriptions.
Can you ask a neighbor for the correct address? Sure. But you may not rely on it.
Does this only apply to foreclosures, or does it also apply to contractors, delivery men, cops and party guests? If you read my post, the degree of due diligence required depends on the degree of harm involved in getting it wrong. If being at the wrong house only involves knocking on the wrong door, then as I mentioned earlier, no due diligence at all is necessary. If being at the wrong house means doing damage to the wrong person’s house or personal effects, then it applies to them. (Including cops doing a SWAT-style break-in.)
A delivery man has never done harm to my house by leaving someone else’s package on my doorstep.
And how often does a contractor start work on a home repair or improvement without having been to the house when the homeowner is there, to go over the work to be done?
**Who gets arrested, the foreman, the banker, the workers, or all 3?**In the case of a foreclosure, the banker should take appropriate steps to ensure that his agents can identify the correct house. Someone who is competent to read a plat map and that the bank judges competent to represent the bank, should point out the proper house to the work crew. The work crew should stay in their truck and do nothing, and charge the bank for it, until such a person verifies that they are at the right house. If that person goofs, the bank is on the hook, not the work crew.
**Does this mean the guys doing menial labor have to be able to read and understand foreclosure documentation, and verify the address personally?**No. See above.
So, when I have the Legal descrption and plat sheet with me when I enter the wrong house, I’m in the clear, right? I mean, I DID use the correct, legally required information, I just made a mistake when reading it.
If I’m not allowed to make a mistake, then this isn’t about due diligence, just call it what it is, Strict Liability. No matter how many i’s you dot and t’s you cross, if you open the wrong house, you’re going to jail. There aren’t many crimes out there that are strict liability. I don’t know that it makes sense to make this property destruction a strict liability crime.
The “reasonable person” is already a standard that is part of the law, and one that takes into account a person’s profession. When you have a professional doing something immensely destructive like coming into your house and throwing out everything you own, police breaking into your house unannounced and shooting your dog or a judge sentencing you to death, this standard should be extraordinarily high. For these people any non-zero failure rate in identifying their target is indicative that they have not met what should be their obligations.
Let me do a related hypothetical. I think the issue here really is that banks are Evil.
So let’s take another look at it. I am driving my car. I rely upon my GPS. I make a Right turn onto a one way street, into oncoming traffic and hit a car. Am I liable? Sure, GPS or no. (let’s take aside the issue I may be able to sue the GPS provider)
Other than a traffic violation, did I commit a crime like assault with a deadly weapon? No.
Now, I then ask the other guy how much he needs to settle it. He is driving what appears to me to be a old beater. He notices I am driving a brand new BMW. He sez $18000. I offer $5K. I point out that his car appears old, not well maintained, and he didn’t have insurance. He points out correctly that I *drove the fucking wrong way down a One way street. *
Now, the accident is 100% my fault. Do I have to pay the guy whatever he asks?
Maybe. The bank only has two branches in one rural county in Ohio. 99.999% of people discussing the story were never potential customers.
But I bet >90% of their actual and potential customers are aware of the story.
I posted the Ohio Criminal Trespass law. You’ve done nothing but insist that no law was broken without showing any legal principle to base that on. If you can interpret that law then give it a shot. If you can show there are no other Ohio criminal laws that apply here then do so.
And if you want to have a rational discussion on the subject switch to a different forum. In this forum there’s no reason to stick to legal arguments at all.
And quit sticking up for the banks like some kind of donkey scrotum sucking parasite. If you want to contribute then find a way to charge the bastards with a crime do they’ll think twice about stealing people’s property and refusing to compensate them.
And I hope they find another local bank for their banking needs.
I kinda thought this was explained. The statute requires: “1) Knowingly enter or remain on the land or premises of another”, which, by my reading, means that the defendant knew the land was the premises of another. There isn’t any evidence that the people who entered the property knew it wasn’t the bank’s property, so they didn’t have the criminal state of mind necessary to commit the offense. I suppose you could argue that the law only requires knowing entry and the defendant’s state of mind regarding ownership is irrelevant, but I can’t find any caselaw to support that idea at all and such a reading flies in the face of the usual mens rea requirement. Maybe you have some caselaw supporting the idea that simply entering property is the only intent you need for a criminal trespass violation.