Most people don’t admit their criminal and/or tortious activity. You look at the situation. What will a jury think? It looks like the guy set a trap, agreed? Yes? Well, here is my trust account, write a check there.
No, you CLAIM that this is the prevailing argument. According to @UltraVires, someone I often disagree with but who CLEARLY knows much more about the law than you do, you are WRONG.
Actual lawyers in this thread disagree with you. So I’m gonna need a cite for this assertion.
By “strawman” you mean “the actual topic of this thread per the OP” right?
Generally that’s not how the term ‘strawman’ is used.
I’m curious about this requirement. The concept of a mailbox being a trap is rooted in the fact that there is a known pattern of behavior WRT the mailbox. We have a group of people vandalizing the mailbox in a specific way, and the owner installs a replacement that may injure anyone vandalizing the new mailbox in that same way.
Let’s assume, only for the sake of this “trap” discussion, that the replacement is a concrete filled object intended solely to harm these vandals. That is not an indiscriminate trap, like a pitfall under your welcome mat, but it targets a specific set of vandals and only harms them when they are vandalizing your property in a very specific way.
Is this actually not at all considered a “trap” for liability purposes? In the scenario for this argument, the installation serves literally no purpose other than to harm people who are playing mailbox baseball, and the law considers that acceptable?
No.
By strawman I mean, we all agree reinforcing a mailox into unusability is not permitted. But what about a reinforced mailbox that is usable.
Strawman: Let’s go back to unusable mailboxes.
I reinforce my mailbox to prevent it being destroyed.
Strawman: But then you tell everyone you did it to injure the vandal.
I don’t think this is a strawman.
There are two questions being conflated here. The first is “Is it illegal to erect a stronger functional mailbox with the intent of hurting vandals?”
The second is “If no-one knew about the intent, would it be possible to bring a successful prosecution?”
The point is that the second question or a variant of it can be asked of any crime, from shoplifting to murder. Yes, if you can successfully hide key evidence supporting the charge from the cops and prosecutors, then likely you won’t be found guilty. That doesn’t make crime legal.
We might conclude that one could easily get away with installing a stronger mailbox with the intent of injuring vandals, providing one is careful never to say that that’s the intent. But the legal question has to be: “If a jury believed based on the evidence that injuring vandals was part of the intent behind building a stronger mailbox, could they convict?”
Nope, that’s not what is happening. Instead a distinction is drawn between a “reinforced” mailbox, like one made of metal or brick, and a mailbox designed to look like a normal mailbox but which in fact is filled with concrete or otherwise hardened in a hidden way.
This example was shared earlier. As you can plainly see, it is designed to look like a regular mailbox but is reinforced with concrete. And it is a fully functional mailbox.
There is no reason to place this kind of mailbox as opposed to an actual metal or brick mailbox OTHER THAN intent to entrap and harm potential vandals.
That’s not a strawman, that’s a question of intent. If you put up a mailbox with the intention of hurting people, you are liable. The difficulty is in proving that you had this intent. Some ways of doing so include:
- you being an idiot and telling someone else
- you not placing a reinforced mailbox that looks like a strong and sturdy mailbox, but instead covertly reinforcing a flimsy-looking mailbox
In case anyone is still confused, here are some examples of concrete mailboxes, some totally fine and others clearly intended to cause harm.
Not OK:
OK:
I already cited personal responsibility above.
You sure did! However, you made no attempt to interpret the cite and explain how it is relevant to your argument, while the actual legal experts in the thread completely dismantled your claim based on, you know, how the law ACTUALLY works.
I don’t see how you can tell the sturdiness of one mailbox from another. Whether it’s 1/4 inch steel or back-filled with cement as pictured above or made from flimsy metal they look the same.
It’s not the homeowner’s responsibility to advertise mailbox structural integrity. That’s up to the person abusing it for entertainment. It’s easy to do, open up the mailbox and examine it’s construction.
So you admit I cited it. That cite specifically explains the the importance of personal responsibility as seen by the legal system and was written by a judge.
If you don’t like the cite then bring your own cites refuting it.
Too bad for you - luckily, the standard in our legal system isn’t “Whatever @Magiver Thinks”. It’s based on what a “Reasonable Person” thinks.
Sure, but it IS the responsibility of the homeowner not to be negligent. A reasonable person would conclude that, if their mailbox was vandalized, it is possible that this will happen again. A reasonable person would either put their mailbox back up, or replace it with one made of a sturdier material like steel or brick. A reasonable person would expect that a solid brick mailbox structure would not attract vandals with baseball bats, for example, because a reasonable person would understand that hitting a brick structure with a bat isn’t going to work well. If a dumb criminal decides to take a swing anyways, that’s not on the homeowner.
But if you take the existing, flimsy mailbox and fill it with concrete, rather than replacing the mailbox with a sturdy one, a reasonable person would understand that, if the flimsy mailbox is attracting vandals, putting that same mailbox up is likely to continue doing so; a reasonable person cannot tell a concrete filled mailbox from a regular flimsy one; and a reasonable person would be able to tell that a kid swinging a bat out a car at a concrete filled mailbox is likely to be seriously injured.
Therefore, there IS a burden of responsibility on the homeowner because it was reasonably foreseeable that filling the flimsy mailbox with concrete is going to cause injury. That’s a legal principle called “Reasonable Care” and unlike the nebulous concept of “Personal Responsibility” that you are bringing up, it is an actual part of the law.
Legal definition of Reasonable Care:
Search on the same site for ‘personal responsibility’ gets no hits:
I admitted you posted a cite. But as was already explained by a number of actual legal professionals in this thread, the cite does not mean what you want it to mean.
Also, your cite is an article from a judge explaining the philosophy that underlies his view of the Law. It has absolutely nothing to do with what the law actually says in the United States.
The legal consequences of surreptitiously reinforcing your mailbox for the purpose of injuring mailbox baseball batters would likely vary from state to state but I suspect that the range of possible outcomes is generally between “the mailbox owner would be at least partially liable for the kid’s injuries,” to “the mailbox owner could go to jail.”
Some states have particularly clear definitions for “boobytrap” that make it pretty obvious that a surreptitiously hardened mailbox is a trap. In California, for example, a “boobytrap” is:
any concealed or camouflaged device designed to cause great bodily injury when triggered by an action of any unsuspecting person coming across the device. Boobytraps may include, but are not limited to, guns, ammunition, or explosive devices attached to trip wires or other triggering mechanisms, sharpened stakes, and lines or wire with hooks attached.
Things to note about this definition:
- A “device” doesn’t need to be particularly complex. A sharpened stake counts. Don’t say it’s the gravity that makes a sharpened stake a trap. The sharpened stake could be poking through a fence and still be a booby trap if it was intended to poke someone who walks too close to the fence. A mailbox is almost certainly a device for these purposes (I can’t see that it’s been litigated though, so I think it would be a case of first impression).
- “Designed to cause great bodily injury” goes to the intent of the mailbox owner but, our hypothetical specifies that the mailbox owner intended to injure the mailbox baseball player, so this is a given.
- “Concealed or camouflaged”: Some would argue that the mailbox is plainly evident. However, if its strength was intentionally camouflaged, I would say we have met this requirement. @Babale, for example, posted a picture of a large flimsy mailbox camouflaging a second mailbox that is surrounded by concrete. A plain and obvious concrete shell around a regular mailbox is not camouflaged. A flimsy mailbox intended to hide the concrete reinforcement inside is obviously camouflage. I’m sure there are a million variations between these two points and a jury will determine whether a particular mailbox design is camouflaged.
- “triggered by an action of any unsuspecting person coming across the device”: Hitting it with a baseball bat is an action of an unsuspecting person coming across the mailbox. Note that the definition doesn’t require the unsuspecting person to be innocent, or operating in good faith, not committing a crime or anything else of the sort. The law is intended to protect even burglars and vandals who may be doing bad things.
@Magiver keeps arguing that (1) it’s perfectly legal to set a mailbox trap and (2) no one would ever admit to setting a mailbox trap so its impossible to prove. On (1), he’s just wrong, for the most part, as noted above. It is a criminal act in some states (like California, as discussed above) even if it is rarely or ever prosecuted. In most of the other states, it could still lead to civil liability as an intentional tort. After all, the person who set the mailbox trap intended for the mailbox batter to get injured and that’s what happened. It’s an intentional act, just as surely as if the homeowner had punched the mailbox batter in the face.
On (2), Magiver keeps insisting no one will admit to having set a trap. There are many ways this could come to light, To whit, if the homeowner:
- Told his neighbors “I’m putting out this concrete filled mailbox so the next punk who tries to bat it breaks his arms!”
- He asked the woman at the hardware store how to build a mailbox that would break the arms of any kid who tried to swat it.
- He watched Youtube video after Youtube video of kids hitting camouflaged reinforced mailboxes and breaking their arms before he built one just like them.
- He googled, “how to build a normal looking mailbox to injure anyone who bats it,”
- He took a welding class at the community college and the instructor asked him why he was making a 1/2" thick plate steel mailbox that looked exactly like a regular mailbox, and he responds, “I want the next kid who hits this mailbox to break his arms!”
- He tells his wife or his kids, “That mailbox should break the arms of the next punk who hits it!” They feel bad when it happens, so they tell the kid with the broken arms.
- The homeowner gloats in his own Youtube video of the kid’s arms getting broken, “A kid kept smashing my mailbox so I built a sneaky concrete filled one so he’d learn a lesson next time! Watch the moment he breaks his arms and learns not to mess with my mailbox!”
- The homeowner is Magiver, who figures he has done nothing wrong. So Magiver represents himself at a deposition after a kid breaks his arms, and when he is asked “why did you build such a strong mailbox that looks like a regular mailbox,” Magiver says, “I wanted the punk kid to break his arms when he tried to smash it.” After all, why would Magiver bother to lie about his motives if what he did is perfectly legal?
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
I’ve have absolutely not argued this. I said it’s perfectly legal to reinforce your property so it isn’t damaged. I’ve pointed out that you cannot tell the difference between the various qualities of mailboxes for sale by sight. It shouldn’t matter to the court whether the mailbox was purchased with heavy gauge steel or reinforced in some other manner. The intent is to make a mailbox that resists damage. The test for it should revolve around common use of the mailbox as to whether or not it represents a trap. It does not.
A reinforced mailbox is plainly evident and completely safe for normal use. Nothing about the mailbox is triggered by normal use.
Once again, I ask for a cite that mailbox baseball is safe.
You see those concrete mailboxes above? In your opinion are those merely to preserve structural integrity or to set a trap for young punk kids?
That’s got absolutely nothing to do with the legal argument at hand here. You can keep parroting this line as much as you’d like, but you will convince no one unless you can provide any kind of cite that this is relevant at all.
What’s the intent in deliberately concealing the damage-resistance features of your mailbox (e.g., by reinforcing it with a concrete interior as in the above examples) so that it looks like an ordinary un-reinforced mailbox?
Because your fundamental argument so far seems entirely limited to the assertion “Nuh-uh, you can’t prove that I intended to set a trap if I don’t admit it!”
But AIUI (though as I’ve noted, IANAL), a jury doesn’t need an explicit admission from you about your intentions in order to form an opinion about what your intentions were.
If I know that you were mad at the vandals hitting your mailbox…
and I know that you expected the vandals to try to hit your mailbox again…
and I know that you deliberately placed hidden reinforcements in an ordinary flimsy-looking mailbox instead of installing a more obviously heavy-duty mailbox structure…
and I know that the vandals did hit your mailbox again and got injured as a result…
then it sure looks to me like you were trying to tempt vandals into hitting your mailbox again, so they’d “learn their lesson” when they encountered much more resistance than the flimsy appearance of the mailbox led them to expect.
Juries aren’t required to take your word for it that you no of course not, honest, Your Honor! never intended a particular harmful outcome when such an intention is far and away the most likely explanation of your behavior.