Anytime you send something important, sometimes the law requires, or people close to you tell you to be sure to send it certified mail, return receipt requested because those lying, cheating bastards on the other side will claim that they never received it.
So, let’s say that they do claim that they never received it. All I’ve got is a piece of paper that says that I sent them…something. I could send them a blank piece of paper. Why does the law put such an importance on CRRR mail?
The point of certified mail is not to prove every detail of the transaction, just one aspect of it that is commonly used as an excuse -" it must have got lost in the mail". The sender has to give evidence of the content of what was sent, but that is usually credible enough. The sender typically has an interest in actually sending the relevant document, such as a legal form or whatever. Large operations such as business and government usually have good records of what they send this way.
How does a CRRR receipt give any evidence as to what was sent? I could mail a blank piece of paper, nothing, a recipe for Mom’s chocolate chip cookies, anything.
I could think of many reasons why you would want to make it appear like you sent something but really didn’t…
But usually the point of sending something certified mail, to prove you actually sent something, is because you actually wanted to send that something.
If you didn’t actually want to send it, then why are you sending it? Certified mail is helpful if you send a document to someone, and they claim it was lost in the mail, and you have the return receipt to prove that they at least signed for something. What they actually signed for is not determined. But that’s not the point of certified mail. It only proves that you sent something, and someone recieved something. Note that the recipient signs the reciept before they open the package.
If you send a blank document, and the reciever signs for it, then opens it and finds blank paper instead of the documents they wanted, they’ll just call you and demand you send the real documents. The fact that you have a return reciept that you sent them a package doesn’t mean you have legal proof that you sent them the documents they wanted.
didnt we have a thread on this a couple months ago?
I remember someone had the reply that the receiver could claim the sender sent a blank piece of paper.
Consider a trial where person A shows a receipt for the mailing of an important document, and person B claims that all he got was a blank piece of paper. Did you follow up with a request for the actual document? Do you have a copy of the letter with this request, and the certified mail receipt? Lost in the mail might be a believable excuse, getting a blank piece of paper with no followup not so much.
There is another reason. At least when I delivered mail, certified letters were treated a lot differently from regular first class mail, being held in a separate place and even being held in a separate place in your mail bag. (I didn’t get a truck.) Certified letters actually are a lot less likely to go missing than regular letters.
I don’t remember a previous thread, but that is an excellent point. It works both ways. The sender or receiver could claim that the document was not sent.
I get that sometimes the sender will actually want the document to get there. But in my current situation (irrelevant to this thread) I have to send my renters a notice that they are again late on their rent via certified mail saying to Pay up or Else.
(Of course, they duck the mail and process servers, so it doesn’t matter. That’s another thread)
But in this situation, I don’t really care if they receive the document or not. I’m just fulfilling my legal obligation before I can evict them (I really won’t, but don’t tell them that) So, I send the required notice and if my some miracle of God they actually sign the form, it:
It shows I sent something. If I was wanting to evict them in a nefarious way, I could send a blank document so they don’t cure their default, and then I bring an eviction suit.
Likewise, they could move to dismiss my eviction suit claiming that they never received the document.
And again, all I have is a piece of paper with their signature saying that they received…something. I’m going to swear to God that I put the document in there, and they are going to swear to God that the document was not in there. What does my CRRR show to the court?
(IANAL) Yes, but then the receiver has to actually claim they received something, in a certified mail envelope. The judge will hear 2 conflicting stories and one must be lying. Who is lying - the guy who is trying to collect on a legitimate debt, or the weasel who has spent a year trying not to pay a legitimate debt? Being a judge is so hard sometimes…
Remember!!! In civil matters, lawsuits, it’s not a matter of “prove beyond reasonable doubt you did send the actual document”. The rule is “preponderance of evidence”, and if on the overall circumstances it’s more likely the receiver is lying, the sender had no incentive to send a blank sheet (all it does is put off collection for 6 months and rack up the lawyer bills) - the judge will say “it’s 60-40 the sender is telling the truth, so I find for the sender.”
Besides, judges hate it when the weasels play games and especially when they blatantly lie on the stand. If that’s how it seems, then expect extra heavy judgement against you…
A couple of things. Usually person B doesn’t know what is supposed to be coming (They might have an idea, but they aren’t sure). Does the law require that if I receive a blank piece of paper in the mail that I must follow up with the sender?
And again, (evil laugh here) I could say that I sent them a first class letter asking them what was going on or send a blank page CRRR and claim that I sent them a letter asking what was up with the blank piece of paper.
I don’t see how this receipt has evidentiary value above my word that I put the document in the package they received.
Fair enough, now I remember why I phrased the OP the way I did. Assume a situation similar to what was described above where it would be beneficial for the sender not to send a real document, but to send a blank page. Now you’ve got the sender lying, saying he sent it and the receiver telling the truth saying he received a blank page.
The judge does one of two things:
Rules for the reciever (right call) but then legitimate senders can never prove anything and would make CRRR worthless.
Rules for the sender (wrong call) and scoundrel senders can get away with this ruse all of the time.
Can there really be such a situation in the real world? I mean, even in your own case you really do intend for the notice about the late rental to be in the envelope, not a blank page.
I can’t think of any situation where it would be beneficial for the sender not to send a real document, but to send a blank page, via certified mail.
You might be confusing it with the idea of proving you had some piece of evidence on a certain date, which for that you* mail the evidence to yourself* and don’t open it. Then it has a dated, unbroken govt seal on it proving it existed since at least before that date. Designs for an original invention, song lyrics etc. are some examples.
One of the coached contestants used this in Quiz Show (mailed himself the answers before he appeared on the show, proving he had been given them in advance).
I believe this is called the poor man’s copyright and has no legal value but as IANAL I’m sure to be corrected
IANAL either (and never regretted it). The idea of Poor Man’s Copyright (PMC) is a perennial notion that has come up routinely since the days of cuneiform clay tablets, and I have routinely seen essays debunking it, claiming that it is legally worthless or sometimes even worse than useless. (Some of which essays even claim to be written by real lawyers!) Just google for Poor Mans Copyright and you will instantly find umpty-ump pages about it. The few I glanced at all unanimously agree that it doesn’t work.
Here is one discussion from The Intellectual Law Group, which at least on the surface appears to be written by real lawyers specializing in intellectual property law.
See also The Myth of Poor Man’s Copyright for another detailed discussion of how it works, and why it doesn’t.
Hardly unexpectedly, snopes has an article on it too.
The gist of these articles seems to be:
(1) You have a copyright automatically from the moment you create your work, without having to do anything.
(2) However, enforcing that copyright in a court of law doesn’t automatically easily follow.
(3) Using the PMC does nothing to add to that. Courts have little-to-no regard for PMC (for reasons which you can read in the above and other cites).
(4) Formally registering your work not only gives you better basic enforcement capabilities in court, but in fact gives you additional rights beyond what the default copyright gave you. For example, only with registration can you sue in Federal court, and only with registration can you sue an infringer for punitive damages in addition to actual damages.
I’m glad you’re not a judge. Why are you automatically assuming that the tenant is at fault? What if the tenant was in fact making payments the whole time, but due to some banking error the payments were misrouted and never showed up in the landlord’s account? What if the tenant was paying the landlord in cash, but the landlord failed to provide receipts in hopes of later falsely claiming non-payment? What if the tenant really was delinquent with his payments, but had been upfront and apologetic about this with the landlord, trying to work out a payment schedule for the debt? There are any number of scenarios in which, regardless whether the debt actually exists, it’s the landlord, not the tenant, who is being a weasel.
This comes up on the ebay and PayPal boards a lot. People claim they pay for something and the seller send them a rock. Then they dispute it with PayPal and all PayPal requires is proof you sent it.
In this case, it seems you could get away with it once or maybe twice, but if a seller does it time and again, in this case it becomes quickly obvious
BeaMyra, We’ve had it happen the other way around too. My wife sold a phone a while back, the buyer claimed it was faulty and was told to return it (all done through ebay and paypal), so they sent back the hands-free kit by recorded delivery (UK equivalent of certified mail) and gave paypal the tracking number. As soon as it was shown to be delivered, paypal took the money from my wife’s account and gave it to the scumbag. When she tried to appeal she was basically told that we accepted delivery and we were S.O.L.
Quite infuriating really.
Because it’s not just the registered mail; that’s simply one part of the proof of service.
Here’s what I posted in the previous thread:
If you are dealing with a company that has been rumored to make trouble, you have a copy of the letter you sent, plus certified mail, for when you’re going to court. But going to court costs money and time and is a bother, so you hope to avoide it by showing the company “Whatever weasel move you try, is not going to work, so play by the damn rules”. If they don’t react, you do a follow-up letter, citing your evidence and threatening a lawyer.
If you are dealing with he-said she-said situations, like ebay, you always have the option of packing the parcel/ letter in presence of a witness, or taking a picture (with digital photos so widespread, a cell-phone is at hand.)
Side-note: now that Christmas is coming up, some postal employees were found out to have been stealing mail some years back because of Christmas Stollen (a sweet food). A company sending CD-ROMs with important data on them back and forth via certified mail to another company was surprised when one of the parcels didn’t contain six CDs, but five, and a media company got the sixth one. First there was a big upset about how such sensitive data (credit card billing) could get mislaid, but in the end it was traced back to some postal employees at the sorting center, who had opened parcels to steal complimentary Stollens that companies sent out as gifts before Christmas to their customers, suppliers and business partners. To cover up the loss, they had replaced some parcels with other content.
I remember it mostly for the stupidity of the guys: stealing credit cards in the mail or cash - makes sense. But Stollen, which hasn’t much worth and can be bought, when every package can be tracked and at a time when a safe job is worth so much more? Boggingly stupid.