A finding in favor of the plaintiff in that case could theoretically support the idea that a mailbox trap is illegal in the sense that if an obviously reinforced mailbox is illegal a secretly reinforced one would also be illegal.
A finding in favor of the defense could not be used to support the idea that a mailbox trap is legal because this mailbox wasn’t disguised and the plaintiff ran into it by accident.
This case can only hurt your argument.
Actually, I used to have a billboard advertising my business. I leased the land from the owner and had a permit issued by the state.
The supporting uprights could be 4x4 inch posts, and they could be placed as deep as I wanted to place them, but they had to have a certain size hole drilled in specific locations, intending to weaken the post so it would snap easier if/when hit by a vehicle.
And that would be pertinent to the Ohio case if the state had such requirements. Absolutely. Absent that it’s tough to mitigate. What do you base it on? How high is up? There are a lot of specifications that cities and counties require that are not State or Federally mandated.
Without checking they probably specify that in my area for metal street lights but not wooden electrical poles. the street lights snap right off if you look at them but not the electrical poles. they go down a lot harder.
Yes, I did. And I used the same cite to explain it: "But this rule obviously does not render one immune. who has made such defamatory statement; he may be dealt with under the criminal law.”
the response to that was to ask for a cite about recent use which does not refute what HIS referenced cite says.
This is why I asked for a cite in the first place. If the law has changed and slander/libel is no longer criminally prosecutable then cite it and move on.
IANAL and don’t intend to get into the weeds on any of this. The topic isn’t particularly convoluted. Does a person have a right to reinforce property to withstand vandalism? The answer is generally yes. Whether or not someone gets hurt from this by doing something dangerous is generally not the owner’s responsibility. It’s the person engaging in dangerous activity. There just isn’t any way of establishing a safe way to do this in court. Any attempt would get shredded by a defense attorney. So far the case has been based on accusing someone of being evil because they legally upgraded their mailbox.
We’ve been all through this.
You have claimed this over and over again without demonstrating it through a legal principle or case law. So far it is just your opinion.
the same applies to the idea that the opposite is true and a homeowner is responsible for the dangerous actions of others. It’s pretty easy to work out. Is a homeowner responsible for someone who drives a car into their tree? If they climb a tree and fall on their house is it the homeowners fault? If someone cuts a tree down and it falls on them is it the homeowners fault? If someone drives through a fence into a pool and drowns is it the homeowners fault?
You don’t think personal responsibility is reflected in legal decisions?
The Lodestar of Personal Responsibility
A basic principle underlies much of not only law, but of life: A person
will be held to the consequences of his decisions; if not by himself, then by
society.
Tort law especially exemplifies the lodestar of personal responsibility.
The concepts of proximate cause, comparative negligence, contributory
negligence, and assumption of risk all were created and became the law to
assess responsibility; that is, to apportion fault.
I agree. It is night and day, but this sort of property law is a fairly complicated area. The driver in that case is trying to say that the homeowners were “negligent” by having such a strong mailbox close to the road, and (according to him) in the state right of way. Nobody is alleging anything more than negligence, so it is a different standard.
But this has nothing to do with property at all, as the driver was neither an invitee, a licensee, or a trespasser. He was a guy driving by a homeowners property and because of his own negligence (failing to control his vehicle) he slides onto the owner’s property. Under Ohio law, the homeowner owes no duty to a passing motorist under the negligence formation and (according to the appellate court) cannot be liable to the passing motorist.
This would be a completely different case with different law under the concrete mailbox formulation.
Here is a good snippet on it from Wisconsin:
The general rule, requiring a property owner to refrain from wilfully or intentionally injuring a trespasser, has been invoked to restrict the means available to a property owner for the protection of his property. It is firmly established that a person cannot protect his property by means which are intended or calculated to destroy human life or inflict serious or grievous bodily harm. Meibus v. Dodge involved a trespass on personal property. In that case, the plaintiff, while trespassing on the defendant’s sleigh, was bitten by a ferocious dog who was left to guard the sleigh. In holding the defendant liable for the injuries sustained by the plaintiff, the court stated that an owner may not protect his property by “means endangering the life or safety of a human being.”
The cases, however, in which this rule has been most frequently enunciated are the so-called “Spring gun” cases. These concern trespassers who have been shot by a spring gun or who have fallen into a mantrap which the landowner had set on his premises to protect his
property. In jurisdictions which have decided such cases the landowner has been held to be liable. His liability is said to “arise from the fact that the defendant . . . has expected the trespasser and prepared an injury that is no more justified than if he had held the gun and fired it” and is based “upon the limitation which the law imposes upon the right of the owner of property in rendering it protection.”’His liability, in other words, is predicated upon the ground that his very act in setting a
spring gun or a mantrap indicates that he is expecting a trespasser and intends to injure him
(Bolding mine) So, by the same theory that decided these cases, the man who puts up a concrete filled mailbox is expecting a trespasser and intends to injure him. That is why he is liable for an injury that he created and fully expected.
looking at your own case reference. The sleigh, by it’s existence, did not harm the trespasser. It was the dog which attacked the trespasser. The dog represents a trap for the trespasser.
A reinforced mailbox poses no such threat. You can stand on it, hug it, stick your hand inside it. Nothing will happen. What you continue to ignore over and over again is the fact that striking anything from a moving vehicle would be the source of the injury. There is no way to prove in court it’s a safe endeavor. Any injury is going to be attributed to the dangerous actions of the vandal.
If it’s a jury trial the judge would instruct the jury what the legal issues are. They would have to consider the dangerous actions of the vandal(s).
Also, I could be wrong but I think a defendant can ask for a bench trial in civil court. That would shorten the trail time considerably. There won’t be an “evil homeowner” emotional song and dance for the jury.
It is firmly established that a person cannot protect his property by means which are intended or calculated to destroy human life or inflict serious or grievous bodily harm.
It is firmly established that a person cannot protect his property by means which are intended or calculated to destroy human life or inflict serious or grievous bodily harm.
It is firmly established that a person cannot protect his property by means which are intended or calculated to destroy human life or inflict serious or grievous bodily harm.
Maybe if I paste it another 10 times it will sink in?
(Narrator: “It will not.”)
It’s frustrating to talk to someone who ignores the facts. There is no way to establish that Striking ANYTHING from a moving vehicle is safe. It’s obviously unsafe and it would get shredded in court. It puts the responsibility on the person committing the act. There is no general obligation to others for their own dangerous acts.
You can’t do something stupid and blame it on someone else. I’ve cited the importance of responsibility in legal matters. It’s pretty entrenched.
This concept is a continuum. For example, you can’t fill your mailbox with dynamite, blow the vandal to smithereens and then claim “It’s ok because hitting a mailbox from a car is inherently dangerous.” Equally ridiculous is for the vandal to sue you because a shard of the mailbox he destroyed scratched his arm. In between is a vast gray area where it is mostly tough titties for the vandal, but there remains a circumstance where designing the vandal’s target with the obvious intent of harming the vandal puts the homeowner at risk of liability.
No, you can’t make a bomb and kill someone with it.
Besides that, you haven’t established that hitting an object from a moving vehicle is safe.
Did you watch the Legal Eagle video posted earlier in this thread? If not, I suggest you do so. It establishes quite clearly that you are wrong about this.
But it wouldn’t be the homeowner killing him with a bomb, it would be the vandal hitting the mailbox that killed himself with the bomb!
I didn’t say it was ‘safe’. I said that it isn’t so hazardous that you should expect your arms to be blown off in the ensuing explosion. The fact that you can lump the act into a group of actions described as “not safe”, doesn’t mean that any and all injuries are fair game.
If the homeowner deliberately makes it more unsafe (there is such a thing) for the express purpose of harming someone, that’s a potential liability.
You’re actually saying that a homeowner is not held liable in a court of law for making and detonating a bomb?
The thread premise is not based on anything exploding. It’s based on a dangerous act of vandalism on a legally installed mailbox. I’ve cited the court’s view of personal responsibility. It’s clearly a dangerous act that would likely involve the arrest of the driver.
That’s about a shotgun booby trap. It has zero to do with this. A legally installed mailbox is not a booby trap. It doesn’t react in any way. You can wack it all day long and it will not attack you. It’s a mailbox. You can make it out of pudding or titanium. There is no legal entitlement to a soft mailbox and there is no legal requirement that it’s sturdiness be discernable.