Stopping Porch Pirates

[gblowfish]

Apologize if a Q. Some of my neighbors had stuff stolen off their porch in the past week. This guy is a former NASA scientist who is a true "mad scientist" with a brilliant way to punish porch pirates and reward people who do the right thing. 18 minutes, but very entertaining. Careful, some language...

[Jewish Rabbi]

Instead of going through all this bullshit he should have just hired Billay to beat the shit out of them.

[srvy]

Originally Posted by TLO

People saying they've seen this before, it's a new video. Likely not the one you saw about a year ago.

Thank you

18 minutes to get to the package exploding? Who has time for that.

[EPodolak]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Version 3.0 has arrived!

Frustrating he isn't using fecal paint instead of glitter on these thieves.

[Titty Meat]

Is this guy on the hook in anyway if someone somehow got injured?

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Version 3.0 has arrived!

Didn't realize glitter box and squirrel-proof bird feeder were the same guy.

[Rain Man]

I felt kind of sad for the little kid whose mother was training him to be a criminal. He's going to end up in jail solely because he has a terrible mother.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I felt kind of sad for the little kid whose mother was training him to be a criminal. He's going to end up in jail solely because he has a terrible mother.

Yeah, that was particularly depressing.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Titty Meat

Is this guy on the hook in anyway if someone somehow got injured?

Probably.

[frozenchief]

Originally Posted by Titty Meat

Is this guy on the hook in anyway if someone somehow got injured?

That depends upon a wide variety of factors. He clearly designed the fake package to be non-injurious and has done this many times without any injury.

To be on the hook, the exploding glitter bomb would have to be the proximate cause of any injuries. While proximate cause is a nebulous concept, you can use 'foreseeability' as a rough substitute. That is, were the injuries foreseeable?

So, say the guy grabs the package, takes it into a remote area and then lights it on fire. The heat makes the fart spray containers explode because they are under pressure. The explosion drives shrapnel into his brain and he has permanent brain injury. Is that foreseeable? Doubtful. Most of the people who would take the box are going to be opening it, not setting it on fire unopened.

However, let's say that the glitter bomb delays going off. Somebody takes the package and then opens it and begins to wonder what it is. He bends down and looks at it only for the glitter bomb to go off. He gets glitter in his eye, it scratches his eye and he suffers injuries. Could the maker be on the hook? This is more foreseeable than the guy who put it in the fire, but he may or may not recover, depending.

Many states have a doctrine called comparative or contributory negligence. That is, if the injured party is more at fault than the negligent party, the injured party gets no recovery. So let's say that Ford trucks have a weakness in a weld for the safety cage. Some one is drunk and challenges another drunken idiot to a race along a narrow dirt road that skirts a mountain edge. This guy loses control of the truck and the truck rolls down the mountain. The weld doesn't hold, the passenger compartment is crushed and he suffers injuries. There are variations on how this works, depending on state law, but in some states if the injured guy is at all at fault, then the other party (Ford) doesn't have to pay anything. Even if the jury finds 90% of the injuries are Ford's fault. In other jurisdictions, Ford only has to pay if a jury finds Ford is more responsible than the injured party. So if Ford is 55% at fault and the drunk guy is 45% at fault, Ford owes money, but only 55% of the damages. If the jury finds that the drunk guy is 50.1% at fault or more, then Ford owes no money. And in the remaining states, Ford owes money if the jury finds they are at fault in any way but those damages are reduced by what portion of fault is Ford's. So if the jury finds that the guys' damages are $1.5M but that guy was 90% at fault, Ford would only have to pay 10%, or $150,000.

There may be other permutations to this formula but those are the rough models that would apply. If the guy I described above suffered eye injury, and that eye injury were foreseeable, then if it went to trial, a jury would decide if the glitter bomb maker bore any responsibility and, if so, what percentage. And the court would then issue a decision based upon that. The fact that the injured guy stole the package is not a complete defense but it certainly would be considered. I say it's not a complete defense because there are numerous cases from many years ago involving people who would set up trap guns to shoot burglars while they were away. The courts ruled that using such violence against burglars was not reasonable since nobody was going to be home and as a general rule, you cannot use deadly force to protect property (there are limited exceptions in a very few states, but I'm not going to spell out each exception. Just take my word for it that you cannot use deadly force to protect property. And shooting a burglar who is in your house in the middle of the night is protecting the lives of you and your family, NOT your property.)

Given those cases, it is doubtful that the theft would be a complete legal defense. That is, the court would likely not dismiss the case merely because the injured person stole the package since you do not have the right to injure a person for theft, but I could certainly see a jury saying, "He stole the package. He's 80% at fault." And then the judge would have to say that he either doesn't get money or doesn't get much money.

I know that's a long answer, but there are a whole bunch of issues involved. This answer skims the surface. This answer is also why when you ask a lawyer a question like this, the answer typically is, "It depends." I don't do personal injury cases so there are undoubtedly issues I am not even aware of or raising.

[mlyonsd]

If you're going to steal something off someone's porch you should easily accept the risk of your face being blown off or at the very least your eyes being blown out of their sockets and you are blind your entire life. EOS.

[digger]

version 4.0

[backinblack]

had a couple of Walmart delivered boxes disappear off my front porch a few weeks ago, got the notification they were delivered and even the picture, but when i got home no boxes. Was annoyed, but I contacted Walmart and had them send me two more boxes for no extra charge.

The contents of the two boxes I had stolen? Ten bags of pine cat litter. Enjoy that shit asshole.

[ptlyon]

Imagine how annoyed your cats were

[Bearcat]

The dual funnel thing is pretty genius... and love how they even automated the flower bed thing in the front to move over the package every night.

[DaFace]

It's still pretty funny, but I do kind of wish there were some real consequences here. I don't fully understand why the cops aren't more involved.