De minimis non curat lex - the law does not deal in trifles. Unless a multi-millionaire pharmaceutical businessman wants to make life difficult for someone, apparently.
It's silly to see the law chewing up so much time and talent for a prosecution so at odds with the public interest.
Given that this comes down to badly-worded laws that allow for a lot of interpretation, essentially would double the land-owner's exclusively-usable land if corner-cutting was forbidden, and there is apparently no precedence set, this is not a de-minimis-case.
Fair, but my point was that it /should/ be. That the justice system is content to chew thru thousand of man hours (police, lawyers, prosecution, court officials, etc) instead of just laughing is indicative of the administrative bloat that prevades our institutions.
If I were a WY legislator, I'd propose an implied 5ft public access easement on all such crossings.
"The de minimis rule is seldom relevant in criminal law (so, for, example, the offence of theft is made out whether the property taken is worth one penny or £1 million) but it is not wholly irrelevant. For example, a shopkeeper who hangs a rack of newspapers on the outer wall of his shop abutting the highway may be acquitted of obstruction of the highway on the basis of de minimis non curat lex."
Comments
De minimis non curat lex - the law does not deal in trifles. Unless a multi-millionaire pharmaceutical businessman wants to make life difficult for someone, apparently.
It's silly to see the law chewing up so much time and talent for a prosecution so at odds with the public interest.
Given that this comes down to badly-worded laws that allow for a lot of interpretation, essentially would double the land-owner's exclusively-usable land if corner-cutting was forbidden, and there is apparently no precedence set, this is not a de-minimis-case.
Fair, but my point was that it /should/ be. That the justice system is content to chew thru thousand of man hours (police, lawyers, prosecution, court officials, etc) instead of just laughing is indicative of the administrative bloat that prevades our institutions.
If I were a WY legislator, I'd propose an implied 5ft public access easement on all such crossings.
The law absolutely deals in trifles. Go brazenly steal a stick of gum from Walmart, and see what happens.
From https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/legal/glossary/de-minimis-non-c...
"The de minimis rule is seldom relevant in criminal law (so, for, example, the offence of theft is made out whether the property taken is worth one penny or £1 million) but it is not wholly irrelevant. For example, a shopkeeper who hangs a rack of newspapers on the outer wall of his shop abutting the highway may be acquitted of obstruction of the highway on the basis of de minimis non curat lex."
In SF, nothing.
Friend of mine got hauled in front of a judge for eating a malt ball in a grocery store.
Judge fined him 10 cents.