The angry man on your front lawn got into this mess because "he cheerfully accepted a cheque from the famous actor for the car". Ban the use of cheques as legal tender and watch this sort of problem decrease. (Sweden has already done this.)
I'm inclined to take a caveat emptor approach. Conceiving of the original owner of the car as having purchased the bad cheque with his car, a greater onus is on him to verify the value what he is receiving in exchange rather than on the supposedly innocent buyer to verify the legitimacy of the goods he is purchasing, unless the goods in question are facially contraband. If the original owner wishes to recoup his value he needs to pursue "David Tennant" for compensation.
To my mind, this is a situation where the outcome ought to rest on a judicial rule that the courts should not themselves be the cause of injustice*, rather than on an attempt to weigh one injustice against another. From that perspective, I think a significant consideration is the fact that the angry chap was in fact a willing seller (whose veracity cannot be taken for granted).
* I recognised this judicial rule back in the late nineties, when I had cause to speculate about how the maxim caveat emptor became dominant in Roman law over caveat venditor. More recently, I've formulated it as a fundamental principle of governance: that, as a general rule, agents of the state should not themselves be the cause, through the application of policy, of harm or mischief which, in the normal course of events, it would be the state's responsibility to prevent, mitigate or remedy. https://malcolmr.substack.com/p/caveat-regnator
“But what of your rights? You purchased the car in good faith.” Your Right is to recover the money from the car dealer, whose Right is to recover the money from the fraudster. Under Common Law your Right may not be enjoyed at the expense of the Common Law Right of another.
Was there a point to this excursus; or was it that you had the lawyerly urge to waste everyones time? :-) X minutes on shaggy dog stories that peter out in the desert of the raconteur's mind are X minutes I won't get back and get on my tits. Short and sweet, please; nevermind eeking out for billable "hours"! Grrr f%^! ftang! ;-)
Economist Mike Munger has an amusing thought experiment that demonstrates your point.
Imagine that you’re driving through a small town and you get pulled over by a police officer for driving through a green light. The officer explains that, in this town, people take social justice seriously, and they’ve realized that traffic lights are unfair.
Someone having to wait for a red light to change may have far more an urgent need to get through the intersection than the people sailing through on green. The townspeople have therefore decided that everyone must stop at every traffic light regardless of the color and compare their needs. The person that everyone agrees has with the most urgent need will go through the intersection first.
Munger, while admitting that traffic lights are arbitrary and, therefore, unjust, observed that they speed traffic flow for everyone. Having to stop at every light and discuss who should go first would make travel slower for everyone, including those with the greatest need.
While this experiment is silly, it actually has a practical application. In Hawaii, there are narrow roads with one-lane bridges (e.g., the “road to Hana”). The “fair” way to cross each bridge is to let one northbound car cross, then a southbound car, then another northbound car, and so on. The problem is that this scheme, while more fair, is very slow. An unwritten rule has evolved that speeds traffic considerably. Instead of alternating cars crossing, alternating *lines* of cars cross. A whole line of north or southbound cars cross the bridge at one time, while the cars on the other side wait their turn. Less “just,” but much faster.
Seems extremely straightforward. How great it would be if I could recover the effects of my foolishness and fatuous credudlity by damaging someone else.
The law always makes compromises, in my experience. I agued once in a military court (actually several times until a wise judge interrupted me) that my client was innocent. After repeating it a few times, the judge woke up and thundered at me, "counsel, no man is innocent, and that is not the standard of proof. The question is only, can the government prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt."
Interesting conundrum, indeed! Even Solomon would have a problem here; this isn't a baby a mother wouldn't want to see harmed. So that solution might not work in this case. I don't envy the judge handed this case at all!
The angry man on your front lawn got into this mess because "he cheerfully accepted a cheque from the famous actor for the car". Ban the use of cheques as legal tender and watch this sort of problem decrease. (Sweden has already done this.)
Dude! You got a tattoo!
So do you, dude! Dude, what does my tattoo say?
"Sweet!" What about mine?
"Dude!" What does mine say?
"Sweet!" What about mine?
"Dude!" What does mine say?
I'm inclined to take a caveat emptor approach. Conceiving of the original owner of the car as having purchased the bad cheque with his car, a greater onus is on him to verify the value what he is receiving in exchange rather than on the supposedly innocent buyer to verify the legitimacy of the goods he is purchasing, unless the goods in question are facially contraband. If the original owner wishes to recoup his value he needs to pursue "David Tennant" for compensation.
To my mind, this is a situation where the outcome ought to rest on a judicial rule that the courts should not themselves be the cause of injustice*, rather than on an attempt to weigh one injustice against another. From that perspective, I think a significant consideration is the fact that the angry chap was in fact a willing seller (whose veracity cannot be taken for granted).
* I recognised this judicial rule back in the late nineties, when I had cause to speculate about how the maxim caveat emptor became dominant in Roman law over caveat venditor. More recently, I've formulated it as a fundamental principle of governance: that, as a general rule, agents of the state should not themselves be the cause, through the application of policy, of harm or mischief which, in the normal course of events, it would be the state's responsibility to prevent, mitigate or remedy. https://malcolmr.substack.com/p/caveat-regnator
“But what of your rights? You purchased the car in good faith.” Your Right is to recover the money from the car dealer, whose Right is to recover the money from the fraudster. Under Common Law your Right may not be enjoyed at the expense of the Common Law Right of another.
Was there a point to this excursus; or was it that you had the lawyerly urge to waste everyones time? :-) X minutes on shaggy dog stories that peter out in the desert of the raconteur's mind are X minutes I won't get back and get on my tits. Short and sweet, please; nevermind eeking out for billable "hours"! Grrr f%^! ftang! ;-)
Not sure how to unwind the sale, but at a minimum fake-David Tennant should hang.
I, for one, found this interesting and insightful.
Thank You.
“Sometimes it is simply better to make a rule”
Economist Mike Munger has an amusing thought experiment that demonstrates your point.
Imagine that you’re driving through a small town and you get pulled over by a police officer for driving through a green light. The officer explains that, in this town, people take social justice seriously, and they’ve realized that traffic lights are unfair.
Someone having to wait for a red light to change may have far more an urgent need to get through the intersection than the people sailing through on green. The townspeople have therefore decided that everyone must stop at every traffic light regardless of the color and compare their needs. The person that everyone agrees has with the most urgent need will go through the intersection first.
Munger, while admitting that traffic lights are arbitrary and, therefore, unjust, observed that they speed traffic flow for everyone. Having to stop at every light and discuss who should go first would make travel slower for everyone, including those with the greatest need.
While this experiment is silly, it actually has a practical application. In Hawaii, there are narrow roads with one-lane bridges (e.g., the “road to Hana”). The “fair” way to cross each bridge is to let one northbound car cross, then a southbound car, then another northbound car, and so on. The problem is that this scheme, while more fair, is very slow. An unwritten rule has evolved that speeds traffic considerably. Instead of alternating cars crossing, alternating *lines* of cars cross. A whole line of north or southbound cars cross the bridge at one time, while the cars on the other side wait their turn. Less “just,” but much faster.
Seems extremely straightforward. How great it would be if I could recover the effects of my foolishness and fatuous credudlity by damaging someone else.
The law always makes compromises, in my experience. I agued once in a military court (actually several times until a wise judge interrupted me) that my client was innocent. After repeating it a few times, the judge woke up and thundered at me, "counsel, no man is innocent, and that is not the standard of proof. The question is only, can the government prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt."
Where is Michael Sheen in all of this?
Interesting conundrum, indeed! Even Solomon would have a problem here; this isn't a baby a mother wouldn't want to see harmed. So that solution might not work in this case. I don't envy the judge handed this case at all!
Perhaps there’s matters the law should not have touched?
Well, for Americans it’s too late.
I could have told you beforehand...Do not do business with David Tennant. It’s pretty obvious, actually.
But.... now I have to reconsider my man crush on David Tennant.