Posted on 06/22/2021 12:02:51 PM PDT by tlozo
This mailbox sure delivers a big surprise.
An Ohio man who built a virtually indestructible mailbox because he was sick of people smashing it is being sued by a motorist who crashed into the thing and got paralyzed, according to a report.
Matthew Burr allegedly turned his front-yard letter box into a postal fortress, by constructing it out of a thick metal post that was buried three feet in the ground and reinforced with rocks and cement, according to reports.
It was so strong that when plaintiff Cletus Slay’s pickup truck slid off the road on some black ice in December 2016 and rammed into the box, it allegedly caused his vehicle to flip over and left him seriously injured, Slay’s lawyer, Kathleen St. John, told a panel of Ohio Supreme Court judges Wednesday, according to News 5 Cleveland.
Burr took the extreme measure to fortify his mailbox after it was repeatedly vandalized over the years, including being knocked over, having a pumpkin thrown at it and vehicles clipping it, the outlet reported.
While the mailbox’s construction goes against Federal Highway Administration guidelines, it’s not illegal, News 5 reported.
Nevertheless, Slay’s lawyers argued that it was wrong to make something that could be so dangerous in the event of an innocent accident.
“The hazardous object in this case is a severely reinforced mailbox post,” the outlet reported of St. John’s arguments. “An owner of property is not justified in inflicting, without warning, bodily harm upon the person of a trespasser or petty pilferer by means of traps, spring guns or instrumentalities of destruction unless he would have been justified in using that force if he had been personally present...
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
slow down in bad weather and maintain control of your truck, Cletus.
Note for the under-informed: Tort Lawyers are working for their clients in our ‘adversarial’ legal system, they have no responsibility for seeing ‘the other side’! They are ‘hired guns’ for their client!
Could this homeowner have foreseen this life-changing accident? Highly unlikely. Did he have reason to reinforce his mailbox due to past history? Apparently yes.
Logic says the homeowner is not liable. The current legal system says maybe as there is the trend to judge on compensating the victim!
Yep, if you’re going fast enough to flip your truck on a country road in icy conditions the fault isn’t the mailbox.
I've also seen shrubs planted in that area that were tall enough to obscure vision for driveways and side streets. One of the worst was a shopping area that had high volumes of traffic entering traffic with a blind corner right up to the curb.
Would he have felt better if it was an oak tree?
If the guy had a less durable mailbox and the truck would have been redirected to a nearby tree, the idiot lawyer would be suing because the mailbox redirected his truck to the tree rather than stopping it.
But, but, but... he was trying to protect his property from vandals and criminals. And since most criminals are democrats the guy with the mailbox might have voted for Trump - meaning the corrupt legal system wants him jailed without bail...
I had to cutdown the ones out front because they kept jumping into the road and wrecking cars.
My snowplow man managed to take mine out every year or second year, haven’t had another problem since I put a 4”x 4”x 1/2” wall square tube filled with concrete planted 4 ft in the ground. We appear to have an understanding.
He was going way too fast. If he was driving slowly as he should have, his vehicle would had gotten totaled but he would have minor injuries instead.
” There’s nowhere for the energy to go but into the occupants of the car.”
Actually, modern cars are designed to absorb a lot of the energy.
Cut down all the trees. Cut down all the power poles. No cars parked on the side of the road or in a driveway...ever.
You never know what a jury is going to do - Remember the MacDonald’s coffee case where the woman spilled hot MacDonald’s coffee on herself on herself and the jury awarded the woman millions. If they decide the guy with the mailbox is better off than they are, they’re stick it to him just for that reason and that reason alone.
I am aware of stores that have sunken posts blocking windows or cinderblock walls to prohibit smash and grab robbers from driving INTO a store. Is “that” wrong?
What if his reinforced barrier was to prohibit highway vehicles from crashing into his home?
Our mailbox had been destroyed many times over the years, both by vandals and idiots driving too close to the curb. I finally purchased a heavy-duty mailbox and mounted it on a 4x4 post affixed to an auger-type anchor. The result is a really rugged mailbox that’s essentially mounted on a spring and swivel. I has survived numerous assaults since, with no appreciable damage.
Homeowners have no rights!
I love that movie. Reminds me I need to watch it again soon. Very soon.
So have they cleared all the trees along the route? And utility poles. And fire hydrants. And vehicles going in the opposite direction at a closing speed of 80 mph?
Sometimes no-fault crap just happens.
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