I don’t think anybody disputes that. The dispute comes in where the homeowner builds a mailbox that is intended to cause harm. Your initial argument was that I can never be liable for an “inactive” object on my property, whatever that means. However, now you are talking about intent, which is where we started.
Incorrect. There are many things not codified in law that can nonetheless be negligent or reckless. AFAIK, there is no law that forbids you from starting a campfire with gasoline, but if you do, you cannot escape liability because there is no code section that covers it. The legality of the mailbox is meaningless; it is the application of it that is important.
Skipping rocks across a lake is perfectly legal. It is negligent to do so when people are swimming in the area where I intend to skip the rocks. Firing a gun is legal. Firing a gun at a paper target is fine. Firing a gun at a paper target when the neighbor kid is running across my field of vision is reckless, even if the neighbor kid is trespassing, and his parents should be watching him.
A person could answer the question that way (just like anyone can make self-serving statements), but it is up to the jury to determine the true intent. And the person will be cross examined.
Incorrect as a matter of law. You are certainly entitled to your own opinion. However, the law recognizes that a legal cause of the increased quantum of injury in this particular case was the homeowner making the mailbox deceptively stronger. True, if the kid hadn’t swung at the mailbox, he wouldn’t have been injured, just like if the would be burglar hadn’t broken into the house, he wouldn’t have been shot with the trap gun. But the law, especially in comparative fault jurisdictions, doesn’t say that there is one singular cause of something and that is the end of the story.
You apportion the fault, and a jury can look at the facts and assign much of the blame to a homeowner for having a needlessly strong mailbox placed there for the sole purpose of injuring the kid who swings a bat at it after being baited to do so because of its deceptively weak appearance. Again, not me, not any poster in this thread, but the law that you want to continue to argue against even though it is well settled.
Nobody says that there is.
Then there is no case.
You have to prove that and you’re right back to a video showing the legality of them. Your entire premise is based on an emotional plea in the hopes the jury of 12 will believe your evil testosterone diatribe and not on established law. This is what was shown up-thread in previous trials.
The issue is not whether you have a strong mailbox. The issue is whether your mailbox design is intended to trick potential vandals into thinking your mailbox is much less strong than it is.
If that’s what you’re doing—installing a mailbox that’s deliberately designed to look like an ordinary, much flimsier mailbox—then you’re trying to fool people about the nature of your mailbox construction. And that’s a strong argument for the inference that you’re trying to entrap or lure them into getting hurt.
If your mailbox design is very obviously extra-sturdy, on the other hand, like the brick pillars and 4x4s that have been instanced in this thread, then you’re not trying to trick anybody into a mistaken idea about the strength of your mailbox. And therefore you are not setting a trap for them.
But taking an ordinary-looking flimsy mailbox and lining it with concrete, or building a half-inch steel mailbox to superficially resemble an ordinary flimsy mailbox, is self-evidently trying to trick and fool people into a misleading belief about your mailbox construction. And that’s clear evidence of an intent to trap them into getting harmed, no matter how much you try to bullshit your way out of it by calling it just a “passive object”. You deliberately constructed that object to be deceptive-looking, which right away trashes your pretense to be acting in good faith.
To take the previous analogy about thieving trespassers stealing apples from your tree, you are not allowed to fill the apples with hidden needles while still on the tree, because that’s trying to trick the thieves into a mistaken belief that the apples aren’t dangerous.
Trying to trick them into a false sense of security about the safety of the apples very strongly suggests that you’re trying to entrap them into getting hurt when they illegally steal your apples. You’re not allowed to do that, no matter how illegal their thievery and trespassing are.
However, you could hang a clearly visible padlocked spiked steel cage around each apple in order to protect it from theft. Since the thieves aren’t being tricked into not realizing the danger in that case, because the danger of the spiked steel cages is very obvious and easily perceived, you’re not on the hook for deceiving or trapping people.
I have little expectation that this explanation will have any more effect on your determined embrace of legal misconceptions than the last twenty explanations by more knowledgeable posters did, but one can hope.
To sum up: Don’t deliberately try to trick or fool people into not realizing that your property is much more dangerous than it looks. If you really want people to leave your property alone, make its dangerous defenses very obvious and clearly indicated.
(I mean, what kind of sadistic idiot goes to the trouble of constructing a seriously hazardous protective device for their property and then tries to fool people into not noticing it, anyway? If you really wanted people not to interfere with your property, you’d make it as easy as possible for them to see that interfering with your property is very risky!
If you’re faking your dangerous protective devices so people can’t even tell they’re there, you’re obviously not trying to get people to leave your property alone: you’re trying to fool them into thinking your property isn’t dangerous, so they will act on that assumption and then get hurt. Which is the act of a reckless vindictive a-hole rather than of a responsible property owner.)
@Magiver In case you missed this:
The post contains the rest of the information.
I will play devil’s advocate on this one. The trip wire has no practical purpose other than to injure someone and the intent to injure is 100% obvious. A reinforced mailbox is designed to receive deliveries from the U.S. government. That doesn’t mean that the mailbox is clearly legal, but the trip wire is clearly illegal.
Right. “A reasonable person” would just know the wire trap is designed to injure. “A reasonable person” may want to examine the reinforced mailbox that is still a mailbox more closely to determine whether this is a case where the homeowner went too far.
Of course there’s also the factor that not every time there’s damages or injury is there someone who has to be punished or pay.
I just know that if I’m in the market for a house I’m going to be looking for a location where the postman or vandal has to pull over off the main roadway and stop to get to the mailbox, i.e. you can’t just do a driveby at speed.
@Magiver has stated that the purpose is irrelevant and that only “active” devices can be a trap. I’m asking if this device really isn’t a trap even though it’s not an active device.
Reading this thread has felt like repeatedly banging my head against a cement-reinforced mailbox. Some people are just incapable of admitting that they are wrong.
If a person applies a sticky “tanglefoot” product to his apple tree’s trunk and branches to dissuade apple thieves and the pilferers get sticky gunk all over their hands and try using gasoline or another flammable substance to wash it off, in the process accidentally sparking an inferno that not only kills them but torches valuable neighboring property, can the surviving relatives and property owners hire Dewey, Cheatem and Howe to sue the ass off the apple tree owner?
But of course.
And given the mutability of the law under the persuasive powers of plaintiff and defense attorneys, any outcome is possible, pending appeals to higher courts and retrials.
Obviously, everyone who’s posted in this thread is correct, depending on local circumstances and the vagaries of judges and juries.
Based on the low quality of U.S. Mail these days, I figure it’s best not to get worked up about mailbox safety and instead to do business by e-mail and automatic deposit/bill-paying. You never have to worry about the consequences of reinforcing your phone or laptop.
Any wire strung across a path is expected to be marked. The important part of that is that it’s strung across a path.
A properly installed mailbox is specifically offset from the road. It doesn’t need any kind of markings…
You seem to miss the court rulings which follow this train of thought. As long as it’s not blocking a public roadway it’s legal. .
We had a kid in my school who thought it was fun to ride with his head and body hanging out a car window. I’m not sure how many IQ points were knocked out of him when he hit a parked car but it wasn’t the car’s fault. It was the driver’s fault.
No. It’s strung on private property. It’s not active so it’s not a trap, correct?
You gave a claim about what constitutes a booby trap. Are you still standing by that definition?
Maybe you could address this part of my post above. What is the relevance of a certain thing being “legal”? In your view, does the specific act that you are doing have to be strictly defined in law to be “illegal” or else you can do that act free of criminal penalty or tort liability?
No law that says I can’t hand an open bottle of motor oil to a toddler, so I must be okay?
As it applies to the mailbox yes.
I didn’t say private property. I said across a path. I didn’t specify public or private. You don’t seem to understand the logic behind liability as it’s applied in the court system. Have you read the cases listed above?
A mailbox is not inline with expected movement. It’s like a tree or a statue or any other object on private property. A path, or driveway is expected to have traffic on it regardless of whether it’s public or private. There is an expectation of some kind of visual cue if there is something strung across it. There is no expectation of markings for trees or statues or buildings on private property. For things like wells there is an expectation that they are secured in such a way that someone won’t fall into them.
A properly placed mailbox holds no legal requirement of the owner to be of any particular strength in design or appearance of strength. Unless you can cite such a requirement then we’re back to the court cases cited above. Your argument has revolved around an emotional fiat of intent. I suppose if you have a video tape of someone who has tested their mailbox with a bat from a moving vehicle and says buwa haha my evil intent is to hurt someone then there is no case. A judge is not going to let a drama queen lawyer spin a yarn of intent without evidence.
Making a mailbox difficult to crush is not the same as trying to harm someone.
But deliberately trying to trick people into thinking that your mailbox isn’t difficult to crush—especially when you know that there are people making a practice of going around to crush easily-crushed mailboxes—very much does give the impression that you’re trying to harm someone.
If you want to put up an obviously difficult-to-crush mailbox, you can do that, and vandal assholes who go around trying to crush mailboxes will recognize that your mailbox looks obviously too difficult to crush and will leave it alone. Problem solved, well done.
But if you disguise your difficult-to-crush mailbox as an ordinary flimsy-looking mailbox, then you’re trying to trick people into thinking that your mailbox is flimsy and crushable when it actually isn’t. And that’s what makes your behavior look like that of a trap-setting recklessly endangering asshole.
Protect your stuff all you want, just not with deliberately deceptive-looking booby traps.
How?
How can you tell visually which of these 2 is stronger: mailbox A mailbox B
Since there is no way to tell how strong a mailbox is, and no law specifying it or requiring it, where does the responsibility lie in the act of vandalism? the responsibility lies in the person(s) committing the act.
Same way that sticking your apple tree’s apples full of carefully hidden needles, especially if thieves have stolen your apples before, gives the impression that you’re trying to harm someone.
Trying to trick people into thinking that something is much safer than it is in reality is deliberately encouraging them to form a mistaken impression that the risks associated with it are much lower than they are. Why would you even do that?
The only plausible reason is that you’re trying to lure them into running the risk and then getting hurt when they find out that the real risk is actually much higher than you deceptively encouraged them to believe.
Both of them look about equally strong, and according to the specs both of them are about equally strong. Certainly, both of them look much stronger than an ordinary flimsy plastic mailbox.
If you put up one of those obviously strong-looking galvanized steel mailboxes, you’re obviously not trying to deceive anybody about the riskiness of hitting your mailbox. If you put up an ordinary flimsy-looking plastic mailbox partially filled with carefully concealed concrete, on the other hand, you obviously are trying to deceive people about the riskiness of hitting your mailbox.
There’s no ethically defensible reason for trying to trick people into thinking that any risk is significantly lower than it really is. Even if it’s the type of risk that ethical law-abiding people wouldn’t be taking in the first place.
In other words, don’t use deliberately deceptive-looking booby traps to “protect” your stuff. It’s really not that difficult a concept for anybody who isn’t committed to acting like a vindictive irresponsible asshole.
As I’ve been reading this thread, I keep thinking that we might be seeing the birth of a new form of mimicry. Like, there’s the classic Mullerian mimicry (where different dangerous species resemble each other, so their potential predators ‘learn’ not to attack them) and Batesian mimicry (where non-dangerous animals look like another dangerous species to hopefully get on a similar ‘stay away’ free ride.)
But someone who puts up a dangerous but innocuous looking mailbox – are they benefactors to the genuinely innocuous mailbox owners? If, say, one out of twenty of all ‘flimsy looking’ mailboxes was actually a poisonous killer in disguise? Mightn’t the vandals quickly decide that this ‘sport’ was just too dangerous to indulge in and thus ALL mailboxes would benefit?
Hmm. Actually, maybe there is already a name for this. I know there are some breeds of dogs that are kept living out with flocks of sheep, to serve as guardians against wolves or whatever. Some of them even resemble sheep in appearance, I believe.
Mentioned earlier, but to reiterate: There is a business opportunity here - rubber mailboxes made of reclaimed tires.
Now I wonder there are other countries where putting up a concrete-filled mailbox would be 100% OK legally. (Not thinking of countries in anarchy, but ones with a different basis for their legal system.) ?