Trash is Private Property in New Hampshire 82
suwain_2 writes "As this article in the Nashua (New Hampshire) Telegraph discusses, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled that trash set out on the sidewalk for collection is private property. In the case that led to this landmark decision, police searched through an area man's trash, finding traces of marijuana in his garbage. The New Hampshire Supreme Court declared yesterday that the police didn't have the right to go through his trash without a warrant. This is the opposite of what most states, and the US Supreme Court, have previously ruled. Live free or die indeed."
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Or is Portland in New Hampshire
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Remainder of my
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Some suggestions (Score:2)
2) Haul your own trash to the dump.
3) Don't set out your trash can until you hear the truck coming down the street. Yeah, sure, the police are going to ooming screaming up in their squad car with the PA system blaring "Step away from that trash!" as the garbagemen attempt to empty it...
Re:Some suggestions (Score:1)
Re:Some suggestions (Score:1)
So I got shredded junk mail, personal mail, bills, and often subversive literature.
I doubt the police are going through my trash but the image of them trying to piece together misc. shredded paper mixed in with rotting fruits and vegies etc. is amusing.
When I tell people this they call me paranoid and say I should seek
What's Next? (Score:4, Funny)
I can just see my private property trash joining together with all the other private property trash down at the landfill and declaring themselves a commune.
Either that, or else I'll be sued by someone whose private property trash was injured in a scuffle with my private property trash in the back of dumpster somewhere.
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
What does it mean for dumpster divers (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine the irony of ironies though...what if you were divin', a cop catches ya, finds marijuana, but it's from the dumpster. Oh the humanity...
Re:What does it mean for dumpster divers (Score:2)
Re:What does it mean for dumpster divers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What does it mean for dumpster divers (Score:2)
Re:What does it mean for dumpster divers (Score:1)
Randy
correct decision (Score:3, Informative)
Re:correct decision (Score:4, Informative)
Re:correct decision (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:correct decision (Score:2)
actually, what I'm saying (Score:3, Interesting)
Since the public (all tax-paying individuals) has no control over public property, and very limited use thereof, the property cannot be said to be owned by tax-paying individuals, as a corporation is owned by its shareholde
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
And the analogy with shareholders doesn't work. I own a few thousand shares in IBM. Does that give me control of IBM's headquarters? Of course the answer is that it gives me the same kind of control of IBM's headquarte
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:1)
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
Damage, injury, or a wrongful act done willfully, negligently, or in circumstances involving strict liability, but not involving breach of contract, for which a civil suit can be brought.
Unless you could make a reasonable argument that the tort was initiation of aggression against others, it would not be punishable. For example, a car accident that's your fault; you would still be liable for the damages against the other pers
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
You might want to consider where, exactly, it leaves those precious private property rights if you can't defend those rights against the non-aggressive (but still tortious) acts of others.
What if, for example, my negligence damages your property through fire, flood, pollution, stampeding animals? Don't you think this is a teensy weensy problem? Isn'
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
To take a specific example, Rothbard considers the pollution in the 1800's by smog-factories to be a tort against the property of farmers and other land-owners, whose property was defiled by the smog from the smoke-stacks. He emphasizes that companies should be completely liable for any damage they may do to other individuals property through pollution, and may be for
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
When the court reaches a decision, the private police company with which the court has a contract (or the court's marshalls) enforce the decision.
If the person ruled against disagrees, he can take the case to his own court.
If the two courts disagree on liability, then they would have to agree upon another court to function as an appeals court, which would have the final say. In this way, every cour
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
you say they would "have to agree upon another court", but what if they don't?
you will inevitably end up with violent coercion, where the richer and more powerful party will crush the other. Are you really happier with this than a democratically accountable State having the monopoly on violence?
Re:actually, what I'm saying (Score:2)
Rothbard anticipated such objections, and adequately answered them. However, for the moment, let us assume that in such a world, all chaos breaks out. So what? With the world-wa
Re:correct decision (Score:2)
Re:correct decision (Score:1)
We have things like water meters buried there, on my street.
But, yeah, the specifics vary from place to place, including whether you put your trash
there or not.
A case a few years back involved Bob Dylan's trash and a rabid fan. If I weren't so damned old, I might even remember the guy's name; he "wrote the book" on Dylan.
Anyway, the logic was, everywhere but NH, that you've abandoned the stuff by putting it in a trashcan outside, telegraphing you
Re:correct decision (Score:2)
> sidewalk and devil's strip are the property of the
> municipality, even though the person whose
> property ajoins it is responsible for its care in
> many cases.
No. In most jurisdictions the city has an easement on the sidewalk, the boulevard, and your half of the street, but you still "own" it.
Re:correct decision (Score:2)
If I didn't like someone very much, all I'd have to do is stuff some pot into his trash on the curb. He gets blamed and arrested.
--jeff
By that logic... (Score:2)
This is just dumb. Who has an expectation of privacy with their trash?!
Re:By that logic... (Score:2)
Probably not, if it's on the public easement.
People in New Hampshire, now.
-Isaac
Re:By that logic... (Score:2)
Funny enough, the government does. Here in Portland, Oregon, US:
In March of 2002, police officers in Portland went through the garbage of a fellow officer without her permission looking for "evidence" that she was using drugs (an investigation that looks more to me like an attempt to punish and smear the officer in question, because she had won a sexual harassment suit against the department). Among the garbage/evidence was a bloody tampon that the cop
Re:By that logic... (Score:1)
"Excuse Me! That's MY garbage receptical. I'm sure you have a garbage receptical of your own!"
I wish that people would put their trash in my can instead of leaving it on my lawn.
Oregon weekly sticks it to the cops (Score:5, Interesting)
They went through the trash [wweek.com] of the police chief, they mayor (who supported the right for cops to go through trash), and the district attorney. They then held meetings with each of these people, asking how they felt about this privacy violation. The police chief actually threw them out of his office. Then they reported on these meetings and printed a list of every item they found in the trash bins.
Needless to say, the "victims" were pissed. The mayor held a press conference, claiming she was going to sue [wweek.com] Wilamette Week for, uhhm, well, she never said what exactly. She never did sue.
It was pretty hilarious.
Gander Sauce, now on special ... (Score:2, Insightful)
a) We get to invent the rules
b) The more rules, the better
c) except for us
wrt point b), notice that many public oafficials like to brag about how many new laws they passed or implemented (depending on whether they're in the stick-em-up or the stick-it-to-ya part of the political spectrum). This is something that they *o
Re:Oregon weekly sticks it to the cops (Score:1)
Basically, what the legal argument was is that once you put your trash out on the curb it becomes public property and thus the police do not need a search warrent to look through it because EVERYONE supposidely has the right to go through it. (I wonder if that makes dumpster diving legal in Oregon?)
This has been used in numerous cases, but it became more public when it was used against a fellow police officer. What was probably going on with
New State Motto: Throw Shit Away Free or Die! (Score:2)
Well, it's nice to see that there is some respect for privacy/freedom still in the US.
Certainly I could have an arrangement with the garbage company which would come onto my property to obtain the trash, and that would have it remain my property until mixed with the other trash, but what's to keep the police from examining the trash and finding my dna in the saliva on a reefer?
Thsi trash was on Hill Street Blues (Score:1)
On the show the judge said it was OK if the trash was in the "scoop" of the garbage truck, at which point it was considered public property, but the cops couldn't touch it before it was mixed with everyone else's trash.
I wonder if the writers were inspired by a real-world legal ruling.
Most probably the writers were inspired (Score:1)
Privacy != Governing Laws (Score:2)
Re:Privacy != Governing Laws (Score:1)
Would that judge also push the analogy so as to say that a non-secured overflooded mailbox would hence be public, because it lays at the boudary of the public street and accessible to whoever put his hand in ? That sounds pretty shallow...
There is something funny, though, in the governments schizophrenia upon property -- here in France, if
Re:Privacy != Governing Laws (Score:1)
But then now that we have the "USA PATRIOT ACT" it is now illegal to even talk about the police searching yourself if you catch them.
A related Oregon amusement (Score:2)
Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs.
by CHRIS LYDGATE AND NICK BUDNICK
[...] Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search warrant. They just grabbed it. [...]
The news left a lot of Portlanders--including us--scratching our heads. Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? Aren't citizens protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment?
[...] Af
Heh. (Score:1)
The technicality in question was exactly that. The criminal's garbage was searched after being loaded on a garbage truck. But it was still separate from the rest of garbage, and thus was his private property. See, the truck man didn't have a chance to pull a lever when the police stopped him. If he pulled that lever, the criminal's garbag
Dumpster Diving? (Score:2)
Of course, finding a 2 or 3 generation old computer was more useful before you could get a NAT router for under $50. "Back in my day, we had to install Linux on the drive to build a router... and we liked it
That's all well and good... (Score:2, Funny)
Kids today...
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:1)
People aren't throwing out significant amounts of illegal substances, but they do throw out paraphernalia, and items with drug residue on them.
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:1)
How incredibly stupid. (Score:1)
Why should we have an expectation for privacy in our trash (once it is placed for collection) ?
Heck the article in Willamette Week Online just tells a story of some incredibly stupid public officials. They shoul
I don't like this (Score:1)
Re:I don't like this (Score:2)
What's to stop competing recycling companies from collecting each others' trash then, when they don't have the Town's contract?
Plus rulings like this make it harder to turn "one man's trash into another's treasure."
I'm not going to press charges if you pick up the busted old couch on the curb. We can assume this to be the reasonable social norm. This ruling is to pr
Re:I don't like this (Score:1)
Problem for Bill Gates (Score:1)
Maybe some company *cough* SCO *cough* could sue him for stealing private property
mixed blessing (Score:2)
WTF? (Score:2)
Was the garbage networked or something? That's the only reason I can think of why this would be in YRO....
of core interest (Score:1)
if trash is public property (Score:2)
Say a heroin addict decides they want to kick the habit so they throw out all of their heroin and paraphanalia. The cops search their garbage and find it all. Too bad it does
Re:if trash is public property (Score:2)
The law makes it illegal to possess controlled substances like heroin. If you possessed the substance, you can be charged with a crime. The time frame during which you possessed the substance can be in the past so long as it is not so long ago that any charges would be barred by the applicable statute of limitations.
The distinction between public and private property in this context is the need for the police t
Re:if trash is public property (Score:1)
I really was just curious about how such a situation would work out. I'm (obviously) not a lawyer.
So thanks for the response and clarification- I appreciate it.
Re:if trash is public property (Score:2)
Re:if trash is public property (Score:2)
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