Yes, he was sued. Not arrested. You can pretty much sue anyone for anything- ianal, ymmv. And IIRC the defendant won the case.
Those slutty mailboxes were just asking to be hit.
Sure, its also a federal offense to destroy a mailbox unfortunately the cops aren’t everywhere. Since that’s the case taking reasonable steps that can only harm people who have already done wrong is reasonable. A 50’ tall statue of a concrete gorilla holding a mailbox can both function as a mailbox, as art and defeat any attempts to harm the mailbox while also destroying your car if it skids off the road. It should also be totally legal and if you managed to damage it you should have to buy a new one.
Are you serious with this garbage? The driver “did wrong” and by implication had it coming? Pretty low.
Are you implying that losing control of your car and skidding off the road means you have a right not to crash? What if the homeowner had planted oak trees all around his mailbox?
Are you unable to grasp that there’s degrees of harm? Dude’s a fucking quadriplegic because this asshat installed a iron beam to be pissy over a fucking $50 mailbox. Shit, maybe he should have just opened fire on the kids and if he shot a passing car, so be it…he was defending his mailbox.
I swear, it’s like this country has a fucking mental illness.
Sure. Are you unable to understand that anytime you lose control of your car whether you hit a house, a car, or a mailbox there is a chance you can end up a quadriplegic. Car dude should lose and have to pay all of the legal expenses of the mailbox guy.
Maybe. Or maybe he would have been anyway. Or maybe he is hurt as he spun out of control on black ice- quite possibly for going too fast. Or maybe… The Courts have ruled the defendant is not liable. The mailbox did not cause the accident.
The law doesn’t deal in hypotheticals. We know what happened in this instance.
You’re basically making the same argument the cops were making in the George Floyd and Eric Garner cases. That those guys were unhealthy or on drugs or might have had a heart attack whether they were choked or not. We know what happened and everything that happened as a result of the direct actions of the people involved are what we’re evaluating. And what the court finds is by no means the authority on the topic of right and wrong, as if we need more evidence of that bogus argument.
Right. A guy lost control of his car due to driving on ice and lost control of his car. He hit a permanent object on a property next to the road and flipped his car somewhere in the process he became a quadriplegic.
The question is does it matter in the permanent object was an oak tree a grandfather planted, the house a father built or the mailbox the son set out the day before? I don’t see any difference in the type of permanent object or the recency with which it was placed on the owners property.
It does matter. He didn’t hit a tree or a house. He hit the man trap. This game of whataboutism is silly.
[Moderating]
@Omniscient, dial it way back. That’s far too hostile for GQ.
Your wheels keep getting stolen off your car in your driveway at night. You put locktight on the lugnuts to prevent this. The next night, the robber uses extra torque to get the lugnuts off and this extra torque causes the car to fall of the jack and he is paralyzed.
You created a man trap?
Since the mailbox is not designed to harm someone there is nothing disproportionate to the consequences of an irrational act.
Put another way there is nothing safe about swinging a bat from a moving car. It’s the irrational act that is responsible for the injury.
When I was growing up, the “cool kids” didn’t use bats, they used chunks of concrete.
There was an instance recently of someone trying to steel a catalytic converter from beneath a car when it came off the jack, crushing and killing him. Although it’s worth noting in this case that no modification was made to the converter to make it tamper-resistant. Just a freak accident.
Make way for the lawsuits! Unleash the kraken! Make that malicious vehicle owner, and the repair shop, and the vehicle manufacturer pay until the deceased comes back to life!
Unfortunately, these are the kinds of news stories we never see the follow-ups on, so we may never know.
Apologies, it was a few years ago and though I tried Google could not find a reference to the case.
As far as I recall an old man in a remote farmhouse got fed up with being burgled on a regular basis by the same group of travelers (gypsy’s).
He obviously reported the incidents to the police who did not very much. Because he involved the police who did nothing, the burglars became bolder and made his life a misery by not only robbing him of just about everything that was left but also regularly taunting him outside his house.
Like the video clip he set up a shotgun trap that one night wounded one or both of the burglars.
As I mentioned the home owner got jail time and also sued by the burglar for loss of earnings because he couldn’t work due to his injuries received while comitting the burglary.
Here was an old man living a quiet peaceful life who ended up homeless and in jail because of thieving scum who actually benefited financially for ruining an old mans life.
Perhaps someone with better Google skills can find an reference to this story.
Moderator Note
Note that many find the word “gypsy” to be offensive as it has often been used as a racial slur. While it is also true that some Romani do not find it offensive, many Romani and many other people do find it offensive, and as such it’s probably best to avoid it’s use.
Wikipedia has a more in-depth discussion of the term, and if anyone wishes to discuss this further, please do so in a new thread.
I believe you are referring to this case.
Not gypsies but neighborhood punk teenagers. The real crime was not that he shot them upon invading his house even though he was lying in wait expecting something. It was executing them after neutralizing the threat.