Obviously, these people did not have the right to privacy. /s
“DIS-CO-NECT!”
how could $100,000 a year support living in $900,000 home?
unless they had been in it for 50 years and value went up.
but even then, property taxes would be huge.
... "My personal opinion is that it's not relevant," Haltzman said. "I'm not going to get into those issues."
I hope they lose, just so this scumbag lawyer doesn't get paid either.
Unbelievable. I live in a very big house. My electric bill doesn't amount to more than $1000 a year. If we used gas that might come to another $1000.
Furthermore, I regularly go to bat for friends who are in arrears on utilities. I've seen poor families threatened with shutoffs for defaulting on a payment plan by paying five dollars short of the agreed amount. Five dollars. And the electric company agent said you only get one payment plan in a lifetime, you mess up, you never get another. (I'm referring here to another electric company in PA, not Peco.)
They are most likely not paying their bills under the advice of their atty in order to show damages re the lawsuit with Interstate.
Obviously voted for Obama, right?
Huh... That explains a lot in just that one paragraph. Kid gets laptop, doesn't pay up because family is broke from living well beyond their means, School activates LoJack looking for laptop...
Lawsuit.
A lot more plausible than the "peeping Tom" hyperbole being tossed around last week.
The family is a total trainwreck, based on the article.
The family situation is irrelevant. If the school activated the laptop to find it they should have then shut if off and retrieved it or informed the family. The kid was called into the principal’s office because he was doing something ‘inappropriate’ at home - not because he stole the laptop or because the laptop didn’t have the security deposit. This is a red-herring defense.
Typical smear tactics from the left. The NEA wants this family destroyed for daring to complain about their privacy being invaded.
Reminiscent of Joe the Plumber.
A lawyer would argue that the two cases were completely separate.
A FReeper would look at one, then the other, and likely conclude that someone was wanting to get paid.
Remember when we wondered if the boy didn't pay the insurance fee, and maybe the school would use that as an excuse for spying on him through the webcam? Well, that's what this article is suggesting, too:
it was the apparent failure to pay a fee - a $55 insurance payment to permit the Robbinses' son Blake to take his laptop home from Harriton High School - that might have prompted the district to activate the Web cam.
Just an FYI.
Yup, they’re deadbeats. But, does that mean they should be spied on by big brother?
The gist of this story, which does not come across in the excerpt, is that non of these unpaid bill problems would have been made into a public spectacle had these people not chosen to exercise their privacy rights in court.
The family in question were warned that they could have all this information come out in public if they went ahead with plans to sue the PA school district for spying into their homes via laptop computer. Should they be blackmailed into silence about the intrusion?
Well they live in a $1 million house, made only $150,000 a year and were hit with several civil judgements for $365,000.
Not that complicated.