neighbor cut my cable in front of a witness and the police said it was a grey area. what are the laws regarding vandalism and how do I persue the issue when the office made me feel it was my fault and we didn't do anything wrong. we have already proved there was no connection form our cable to hers and that our cable was still active when the tech came to reinstall cable after all the damage she did.
2007-04-27 11:19:27 · 3 answers · asked by alatator 1 in Politics & Government ➔ Law & Ethics
Let me see if I understand this correctly.
1. You have cable service.
2. Your neighbor thought you were still the signal so he cut our cable.
3. A repair tech came out and fixed the cable connection and determined that your cable connection was legal.
In this case the only party that was injured was the cable company. Your loss of services didn't matter because there are no laws that cover it. The cable company is the only one that can file a civil law suit. If they do then you can file as an interested party on the grounds of denial of service. But, if the cable company doesn't file a case then you case would be too weak to be filed separately.
There may be some precedent or local ordnance that I am not aware of that could give you a chance, you will have to contact a lawyer to find out if that exits, but there are no federal laws that I know of (I am not a lawyer I just watch them on TV). It is possible that you could take your neighbor to small claims court and sue him there, but even that one would be a difficult case to sale. The problem is attaching monetary damages to your neighbor’s action. If you pay $30.00/month for cable and you lost service for 3 days than your monetary damage would amount to only $3.00, which is far less than the court filing fees. If you had to pay for the repairman to come out and fix your problem then you could tack on that charge to the suit, but again the cost wouldn’t be enough for you to be taken seriously.
Yes, your neighbor performed an act of vandalism, but it is such a minor one that it wouldn’t be worth the expense to arrest and hold a trial. You could have charged your neighbor with trespassing, if he made the cut on your property or he could be charged with damage to your party. Both are criminal cases, but the problem was so easy to remedy that a criminal case would not be worth filing.
Unfortunately, the only remedies that I can think of are childish ones and ones that could get you into trouble.
I could be wrong on the details, but I am confident about the basic principle. You should contact a lawyer to make sure. These leads won’t charge you for advice.
Sites for Free legal advice in the US:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLR,GGLR:2006-49,GGLR:en&q=Free+Legal+advice
http://www.lawhelp.org/
http://www.freeadvice.com/all_topics.htm
http://www.lawinfo.com/
http://www.lsc.gov/about/grantee_links.php
http://www.thelaw.com/
http://www.flac.ie/
http://www.legalsurvival.com/
2007-04-27 12:32:35 · answer #1 · answered by Dan S 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, the cable isn't your property, but it IS private property of the cable company. If they're unwilling to press charges or sue for damages, the most you could probably do is report them for tresspassing....assuming they cut it while on your property.
2007-04-27 11:24:50 · answer #2 · answered by evans_michael_ya 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If the cable company repaired without charge to you, they could take action. The most you can do is have them warned not to trespass your property. The next time they do you can charge them with trespass. If you had to pay for the repair you could probably take them to court for malicious mischief.
2007-04-27 11:59:55 · answer #3 · answered by Richard P 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋