My sister’s stepson and his friend took it a step further and would light mailboxes on fire with bottles of gas. I guess a fair number of them are built with wooden frame to hold the mailbox itself.
Eventually, one of their friends turned them in, hoping for a reward. My relative was 18 at the time and the friend was 17. They did get into legal trouble, but too as bad as they could have done.
If the homeowner had planted a mighty oak tree, and someone (very unwisely) attempted to smash the tree with a baseball bat from a moving car, resulting in injury or death, would the homeowner be on the hook for that unexpected consequence? I would presume no. Why not? Presumably, because that wasn’t the homeowner’s intent: His intent was to get some shade in his yard.
Now suppose that a homeowner puts up a concrete mailbox, with the intent of breaking the bat of anyone who attempts to vandalize it. As with the oak tree, his intent was not to cause any injury. If an injury results without his intent, why should the results be any different than for the tree?
That of course is not the case originally being discussed. The homeowner put up a structure that looked like a mailbox but was just a big chunk of concrete with no ability to hold mail. A reasonable person would know that someone might get hurt because of his action (even if his intent was just to break someone’s baseball bat).
If he had built an immovable bunker type structure that still functioned as a mailbox, he would have been fine (as has been stated multiple times in this thread).
He didn’t plant a tree. This is like the 10th time this stupid counterfactual has been brought up. He built a steel and concrete reinforced mailbox.
Now, I would argue that we should probably have regulations that prohibit the planting of trees within X feet of certain roadways specifically because of the danger they present, but obviously we’re not going to go bulldozing strips of forests that happen to have roads passing through them. However that’s an entirely different discussion that has nothing at all to do with the situation we’re talking about now.
A homeowner planting a tree is a common and expected thing, they don’t make breakaway trees so we’re kind of stuck there. They do make breakaway mailboxes, so going WAY out of your way to make a potentially lethal one is one that requires a substantial degree is callous disregard.
Ok, so you finally agree that homeowners are allowed to place immobile objects on their property even if they may be hit by people or cars and harm the person that hit them.
Now the question is can owners place immobile art work on their property? Because it’s clear that the owner of the mailbox hit by the car preferred it’s aethesetics to one dented by a bat. If he could have placed a 10k lbs bronze bear like my neighbors have in their yard, what is the difference in their artistic preferences? You’ll be more dead hitting the bear.
If it’s in a zone where a car leaving the roadway is likely to hit it, yeah it probably shouldn’t be allowed. Or at least you should be liable for any death or dismemberment it causes. But you’re making a bogus slippery slope argument here. Going out of your way to put something dangerous in a place where it’s easily foreseeable that it could cause harm can and should make you liable in court.
People quickly forget that you’re not granted unlimited rights to do anything you want on your property in most places. You can’t install a firing range on your land next to the roadway. You can’t open up a liquor store or other business if it’s not zoned for it. It’s like we have a bunch of sovereign citizen’s running around in this thread.
I don’t know about this. Houses around here often use huge boulders, purchased from landscape companies, as decorative features.
So people shouldn’t put bars on their windows to stop burglers because a person committing a crime could get injured? And I don’t think you ever addressed my anti-theft lugnut = death to thief scenario. If you did could you please point out the post with your reply?
That would be relevant if the question was about somebody who put bars around his mailbox. It’s not.
Its the point that if I put in passive protection for my property, like reinforcing my mailbox or bars on my windows, then it is not on me when a criminal injures themselves trying to damage my property.
No it is not. This was all discussed upthread ad nauseum. It is the difference between making a strong mailbox (probably fine) and making a chunk of concrete disguised as a mailbox that you put in place specifically to have a harmful effect on the criminal (potentially illegal).
Yeah I admit it the concrete block is a trap that serves no useful purpose qua a mailbox. I’m countering omniscient’s objection to protecting my bona fide mailbox by making it indestructable to a vandal since it may hurt him while he violates the law and (tries to) destroy my property…
The person who was paralyzed here WAS NOT A MAILBOX VANDAL. I feel like we need to keep reinforcing that point. These asinine analogies tend to neglect that fact…setting aside the fact that maiming isn’t the correct punishment for vandalism either.
You want a more apt analogy for this silliness? You suffer a break in. You respond by barring your windows. You have an AirBNB guest who dies in a fire because you eliminated the secondary means of egress. THAT is a comparable analogy.
In fact, let’s use a real-world example. The E2 tragedy in Chicago. A club was dealing with a lot of people sneaking in the back door not paying the cover and maybe even some people dealing drugs through there. So they said fuck it and chained the door shut. A bouncer used mace and caused a stampede of people trying to get out. 21 died, crushed against that chained shut door.
I’m sure the club owner felt like he was justified in his actions to prevent those wrongdoers from using that fire exit. Fuck those drug dealers, thieves and trespassers. It’s his property after all and he has a right to protect his business. But then his bad solution to a problem causes a tragedy with some unassociated innocent person getting caught in the trap. Mah rights!
Reading back through the quote and reply chain that led to your comment, I don’t think he said that, but was replying to a comment that somebody making a useless concrete-filled mailbox might not intend injury, but only a broken bat.
This conversation has gotten a bit tangled, and it’s become a little difficult to determine who is replying to which claims. Sorry if I contributed to that.
Difference is what the owner did (and AirBnB owner in your other analogy) were making their premise illegal. If a person adds to their property LEGALLY like a tree, giant boulder, art piece, reinforced mailbox, etc. then that is a completely different issue.
So how bout this, you put up a legal brick wall on your property according to all permit setbacks/ A person loses control of their car and hits your wall paralyzing them. Are you saying it was wrong to put up the wall?
No problem, I’m confused too. I thought omniscient objected to reinforced mailboxes because they may hurt the vandal but now I’m not so sure. I now think he objects to the fact that it injured an non-vandal but I’m confused by his arguments still like planting an oak != reinforcing a mailbox or illegally modifying your property = legally modifying your mailbox.
Where are we getting the idea that this mailbox was useless? Has that been established somewhere?
From the judicial opinion: "There is no evidence in the record that appellees’ mailbox did not provide the rural carrier convenient and safe accessibility without leaving their conveyances or that the postmaster received a complaint that appellees’ mailbox was “insecure or badly-located.”
Which mailbox?
In the criminal case, the regular mailbox was taken in at night, and a duplicate trap one, filled with concrete was set out.
In the civil case, the mailbox was not useless. And the defendant won.
"“Since normal traffic does not drive in the clear zone, there is no duty to remove an off-the-road obstruction that does not affect travel upon the highway.” Floering
(no liability for homeowner for a tree on his property)
“(no adjacent landowner duty to keep right-of-way free from an off-road, large stone pillar on the possibility that vehicles may leave the traveled portion of the roadway)”. Ramby v. Ping
I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but one aspect to mailboxes is that they might be placed on property that the homeowner doesn’t actually own. Typically the homeowner’s property line ends some distance from the roadway and would be too far away for the mail carrier to reach. The homeowner’s mailbox at the edge of the roadway is most likely on city or country property. Even if the homeowner is free to build whatever they want on their own property, that right wouldn’t necessarily apply to something like a mailbox that the homeowner puts next to the roadway. A solid steel mailbox might be fine on their own property, but it might introduce liability if they placed it on the public property in front of their house.