Lawsuit asserts right to get drunk on private property

Boston Globe ^ | July 8, 2005 | By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff |

[Dashing Dasher]

Eric Laverriere was celebrating last New Year's Eve at a friend's house in Waltham when police broke up the party. They took him into protective custody and kept him locked in a cell for nine hours until the effects of a night of beer drinking wore off.

In what legal experts believe to be a first-of-its-kind legal challenge, Laverriere filed suit against the Waltham Police Department in US District Court in Boston, contending that he has a constitutional right to get drunk on private property ''so long as he causes no public disturbance."

Laverriere, a 25-year-old computer systems specialist from Portland, Maine, argues that the Massachusetts Protective Custody Law is intended to target public drunkenness and that Waltham police overstepped their bounds when they used it to seize him from a private residence.

''One thing people should be able to do is drink in their own house," Laverriere said in a phone interview yesterday. ''That's the beauty of the land of the free."

The state's Protective Custody Law, enacted in 1971, replaced a law dating back to Colonial times that made public drunkenness a crime, subject to arrest, conviction, and a criminal record. The law, which does not explicitly say whether it applies to those in public or in private, authorizes police to take incapacitated people to their homes, a treatment facility, or a police station, where they can be held against their will for up to 12 hours.

Under the law, people have to be drunk and deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. They are not charged with a crime.

Laverriere asserts in his lawsuit that he had ''a constitutional right to be drunk in private, a privacy and liberty right founded in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution."

{SNIP}

[Dashing Dasher]

LOL!!!

Sounds more plausible.

[Larry Lucido]

giving him the phone number of one of our cute female guests.

Trading a woman for a free pass on a ticket - what a nice man you are.

You don't remember? How do you think my handcuffs ended up at your house? (And I still want them back!)

[Dashing Dasher]

ASK ME!!!

NOT HER!!!


;-)

DD

[Dashing Dasher]

Woof.

[patton]

Tailslide.

Should I? ;)

[Dashing Dasher]

"I saw, I conquered, I came."

I'm thinking....

"we saw, we acquiesced, we came."
"we saw, we consented, we came."
"we saw, we advanced, we came."

thinking...

[Dashing Dasher]

haven't you?

[Jersey Republican Biker Chick]

Wow you came a lot!!

[Dashing Dasher]

Don't you?

[patton]

.....yes. heheheh.

[patton]

Wow. There is an immelman in there, somewhere.

[Dashing Dasher]

FYI....
Giggling isn't macho.

;-)

[Dashing Dasher]

Only if you do it right.
If you don't, it's an Immel-Spin.

[Jersey Republican Biker Chick]

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

[patton]

That ain't giggling, a'la mutley - it is a sardonic laugh, a'la vladimir dracul.

[Feiny]

The Flaming Mouse visual is hilarious.
Please tell me you guys stomped them dead before they did any damage.

[Dashing Dasher]

[patton]

What an interesting notion. Max would be proud.

Thank heavens, he is dead. LOL. No competetion there.

[Dashing Dasher]

Oh... geezz... not that flaming dead mice story again.

[Jersey Republican Biker Chick]

Something like that!