So you’re saying is that, under the law, you’re not liable for crimes committed due to your own incompetence.
Is this supposed to make me feel better?
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I live a fairly modest lifestyle, I do not own a lot of small and valuable items. Most of my obvious treasure is in the form of my TV, my mattress, some clothing, a few decent kitchen items, and furniture. I do, however, have a couple of small and valuable items that I don’t display and, because of my slightly laconic approach to household organizing, I couldn’t tell you exactly where most of them are right away. It would take me some time actively searching to find them.
If I were upset or if, due to intrusion and other theft, my home was in further disarray I may longer to find them and may temporarily forget about them entirely until things settle down.
All it takes is a shred of experience and empathy to understand just how easily someone could forget to list some of their precious items.
Did the woman list a Chagall and some fur coats in the modified inventory, or was it the kind of shit that might slip someone’s mind when they are under duress and old enough to have collected a lot of personal shit over the years?
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I’m really sorry that the only job you can find to feed yourself with is stealing people’s shit. That’s a rough situation to be in to be in, for sure. I honestly don’t know what I’d do if things got that bad. But don’t try to make like you’re not responsible for your own actions because you were just following orders.
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If you don’t want to replace somebody’s Rolls Royce, don’t break into their house.
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“Corporations are people too, my friend”
Have you considered being less bumbling and incompetent, then?
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In a lot of countries mistake of fact is a defence to charges of theft. In other words, if you legitimately and reasonably believe that you have permission to take the stuff you are taking, it’s not theft.
This is true even if you’re not a bank. There was a case here in Britain last year where a Polish man of no fixed address (so either homeless or a recently-arrived immigrant) was caught by a homeowner sitting on his couch, watching his DVDs and drinking his beer. He wasn’t charged with any crime- presumably because he got the address wrong and thought it was a different house he had permission to stay in. On the other hand, the homeowner also wasn’t charged with assault despite having used force to detain the intruder until the police arrived.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Personally, I don’t think we should have “corporations.” It creates these situations that go completely against our expectations of how society should operate.
So thinking that you’re in 515 because you’re too stupid to read the number “517” on the door/mailbox/whatever constitutes a “legitimate and reasonable belief” for purpose of taking everything your victim owns?
Again I ask, is this supposed to make me feel better? Where exactly do we hold people responsible for doing massive harm through negligence and incompetence?
So, if I’m reading this right, even the banks that theoretically should have the most experience are routinely guilty of reckless negligence, laundered through expendable subcontracters?
I’m sympathetic to the notion that hunting down the actual repo men is largely pointless (even if I did think they were scumbags, they are the wholly fungible and powerless ones, unlike Bank HQ, and you always want to shoot for the head); but your account suggests that banks Just. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. when it comes to the alleged “property rights” of little people. For that, stick 'em up against the wall.
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Let me get this straight. So the homeowner goes away for two weeks vacation and turn off utilities to save money and the grass grows a bit during that two weeks too, but they left the front door unlocked when they went on vacation? And gave away all their stuff before going on vacation? That’s what the bank president is trying to say?
Something smells here and it isn’t the homeowner’s list.
And yes, undoubtedly a lawyer vetted the letter. I will also say that the lawyer most likely told the bank president to just pay the money, already, and get it over with. $16K (the damages that the homeowner is claiming) will get burned up pretty quickly by legal expenses if the homeowner files a lawsuit. But good legal advice is worthless if your client is an idiot. Just sayin’.
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From some angles, corporations seem as if they were invented to evade accountability.
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In civil court. But police don’t get involved with that, because it’s not their job- just like if someone scrapes your car while parking you can make them pay for repairs but can’t have them arrested for vandalism.
The homeless guy in my earlier example didn’t get sued because suing a homeless person for the cost of a couple of beers is ridiculous and probably reprehensible.
If you’re so incompetent that you can’t read a house number on a fence post and realise you’re not only at the wrong number, but the wrong side of the road, you shouldn’t be working in an industry that requires going to different addresses.
A few addresses a day and errors are unavoidable? I hope you never move into an industry as strenuous as pizza delivery: the standards they expect might be a little high for your level of competence.
Far too often when I do come across a befuddled and angry resident,
99% have received some correspondence that they typically ignored.
Perhaps the correspondence was ignored because the mailman wasn’t a complete bumblefuck and the correspondence was delivered to the correct address?
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But they usually have nicer letterhead than ‘organized crime’ groups, so there’s that.
Legitimate foreclosure on a house is probably purely a civil matter. The police need to be involved here because … breaking and entering … theft … destruction of property … etc
Although it was a mistake (hamfisted, reckless, disregarding of reality), it has resulted in criminal acts.
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I see allot of argument on whether this is a civil matter or whether this is burglary. Why does that matter? The police are not here to make legal judgements. That’s for the courts to decide. Move on the complaint and let the courts decide if it has merit.
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In terms of what was actually taken and destroyed this is a “he said, she said” where the “he” is a bank that broke into the wrong house and illegally seized and destroyed someone’s possessions and “she” is a hapless victim. I’m not sure where you get “it seems more likely than not” that the bank is correct about the fact.
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Every line of work is subject to human error, but sometimes there are more errors than others. If I make an order at a coffer shop and they give me the wrong kind of tea, I sigh and usually don’t even bother complaining. Mistakes happen.
Repossessing a house is a little bit bigger than that. A system like this needs a lot more checks in it. Information on houses being repossessed should be very, very error free, and if it is not then people need to be sued into oblivion so everyone else can get the message.
Also, you mention that repossessing houses doesn’t pay well. That is just part of the problem. The job should come with a high level of accountability, require professionalism, and have pay that reflects that. I’m not blaming people who are doing the job now, but the idea that it is a shit job that you take if you can’t get another job is terrible. If we hired people who couldn’t find another job to be fire fighters, would we just shrug when buildings burned down or would we say there was something wrong with the system?
All of this would make repossessions a lot more expensive, but if that’s the cost of not casually stealing people’s houses then I think it’s a cost that banks should be forced to pay.
Edit: Imagine we passed a law that said that if a thing was mistakenly repossessed then the bank who hired the contractor to do that had to pay 1,000 times the value of the thing they were trying to repossess as a fine. I think you’d see the error rate drop dramatically in a very short time period. It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s that they don’t want to do it because they don’t care.
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Breaking and entering, as well as theft, are criminal matters.
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