Archive for the 'Weird Laws' CategoryPage 2 of 4

You Can Get a DUI Even If You’re Not Driving

Published
by
Michael Law
on October 29, 2007
in Criminal Law and Weird Laws
. 0 Comments

An appellate court ruled that a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol can be imposed on someone who isn’t driving but is behind the wheel.

Say what?

Well, David Montalvo, 36, was sleeping in his GMC pickup truck in the parking lot of a Market Place Deli, apparently sleeping off the effects of his drinking from the night before. A police officer from the Hamburg Police Department knocked on his pickup truck window at 5am in the morning. When Montalvo awoke, the officer instructed him to take a Breathalyzer test due to suspicion of drinking, but Montalvo refused to take the test.

Montalvo was arrested and entered a forced conditional guilty plea. His lawyer, Evan M. Levow, argued that the officer had no reasonable grounds to suspect a criminal activity on a guy sleeping in his truck. One key piece that may have affected the situation is that his car was running, although it was parked. The temperature was 25 degrees Fahrenheit so he apparently had the heater running.

The appellate court disagreed with Montalvo and Levow.

“From the perspective of the officer on the scene, I don’t find at all that what he was doing was unreasonable. In fact, I find it would have been unreasonable to have stopped his inquiries at any point short of what he did,” said Superior Court Judge Thomas Critchley Jr. “The officer wanted to make sure the driver was ‘okay,’ nothing was wrong with the businesses and that the truck was operating properly. We are convinced that under the facts as observed by Officer Aaronson defendant was lawfully subject to limited inquiry based upon an objectively reasonable exercise of the officer’s community caretaking function.”

Now the sleeping motorist has a DUI on his record, a “driver responsibility” tax of $3000, miscellaneous fines and fees of around $1000 and legal bills to take care of.

Doesn’t seem right to me. Wasn’t he doing the right thing sleeping off his drunkenness in a parking lot?

I can see both sides of it.

On one hand, the police officer has a duty to keep drunk drivers off the street. How can he be assured that half an hour later he’d wake up and still being intoxicated drive around and smash into something or someone?

On the other hand, it’s much better to have a drunk driver sleeping it off in a parking lot than trying to get home drunk. Do you think maybe this ruling may cause more people to drive home drunk because they’ll be scared a cop will give them a DUI for stopping somewhere to sober up? It’s a tough situation for sure.

Legal Filing: A-1303-06T5 STATE OF NEW JERSEY VS. DAVID MONTALVO
(SUSSEX COUNTY AND STATEWIDE)

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When Years Can Equal Anuses in a Court of Law

Published
by
Michael Law
on October 24, 2007
in Comedy, Criminal Law and Weird Laws
. 0 Comments

Do you have 21 anuses?

How would you feel if a police officer asked you that?

Well that’s what happened to a super drunk Spanish speaking driver.

A man gets pulled over because the cops on the case find him suspicious of driving under the influence (DUI). When they pull him over, they find out that he can only speak Spanish. So they call over another officer that speaks Spanish. He shows up and reads the driver his Miranda rights and they give him a breathalyzer.

The dude is completely blasted off his mind drunk.

So the cops think, ok this is a done deal, he’s going to jail for DUI. We have our case sealed and this guy is going down with a definite conviction. But a twist in the case comes in. The driver’s attorney submits a motion to void the results of the breathalyzer. His lawyer says that the drunk driver of the car didn’t really understand his rights before he was administered the breathalyzer test. The police officers are dumbfounded because they even read everything off a card to make sure they got everything right in Spanish.

The defense lawyer then displays the card that’s in Spanish which the officers used. In the card, there’s a section in which the officer is supposed to ask the suspected drunk driver if he is 21 years old, which is translated to, “Tienes veinteuno años?”.

However, there was a small problem with that.

There was no tilde over the n, resulting in, “Tienes veinteuno anos?”

Big difference.

In Spanish, años means years. But anos translates to anus.

Yes, the driver thought they asked him, “Do you have 21 anuses?”

The weirdest part of it all? The defendant answered, “Si.” (Yes.)

To top it all off, once they’re all in court, the defense attorney won’t even use the word “anus”. He instead calls it “the back region”.

So remember, if you’re ever in danger of DUI, use the Anus Defense™. In fact, we are trademarking the phrase. All royalties must be directed to me. Paypal accepted. Rates are negotiable.

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Scream at Your Toilet and Get Fined or Put in Jail

Published
by
Michael Law
on October 20, 2007
in Torts and Weird Laws
. 2 Comments

Apparently it’s illegal to scream at an overflowing toilet.

Dawn Herb, a woman in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was cited for disorderly conduct and could face up to 90 days in jail and a fine up to $300.

“It doesn’t make any sense. I was in my house. It’s not like I was outside or drunk,” said Ms. Herb. “The toilet was overflowing and leaking down into the kitchen and I was yelling (for my daughter) to get the mop.”

Bathroom Law. Overflowing? Lawsuit, baby.She admitted to using some profanity near an open bathroom window.

The big problem for Dawn is that her next door neighboor was a police officer. He asked her to keep it down, she didn’t, so he call the cops on her.

“You can’t prosecute somebody for swearing at a cop or a toilet,” said Mary Catherine Roper, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Philadelphia.

The thought now comes up: is this really against the law? Is getting pissed off at your toilet a crime? Is toilet-screaming now illegal?

The quick answer to this bathroom brawl? No.

This is the text of 18 Pa.C.S. § 5503(a), which is Pennsylvania’s prohibition on disorderly conduct:

A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he:

    (1) engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior;
(2) makes unreasonable noise;
(3) uses obscene language, or makes an obscene gesture; or
(4) creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.

Was Dawn engaging in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior? Not unless you count toilet-warfare as violent, no.  Was she making unreasonable noise? Let’s remember the statute says “with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof”. She definitely didn’t do that. Did she use obscene language? Well yes she did but, again, keep in mind she didn’t do it “with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof”. And we can pretty much throw out the “creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.”

Our main point that we should take from this is not to let others dissuade you from having a good time under the guise of “disorderly conduct”. I can’t tell you the amount of times people have tried to use that excuse to prevent people from doing a fun, non-violent, legal activity that may produce some noise. Remember, disorderly conduct goes hand-in-hand with public unruliness which may lead to disorder and tumult. Just noise does not break the public peace! Yes it can piss off people that may want to go to sleep. Yes, 91 year old people who like their “peace and quiet” may throw their walker at you.  But noise in-and-of itself does not cause the crime of disorderly conduct! It is not meant as a catch-all condition for any little thing that can disturb or annoy someone.

In this case, Dawn was in her home and her neighbor seems to be the only person that was disturbed by this. Her neighbor may have a right to be pissed off. He may have the right to not talk to her again. He may have the right to not bring fruitcake to her house in the Holidays. But disorderly conduct? You sir, are the one out of order.

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