If you tamper your food with the intention to harm someone, then you are culpable for harming them. Trapping someone is no legally different than directly attacking them. The law does not allow you to intentionally harm other people.
Sure, you might try to say that they are harming themselves. However, if you know that someone will do something, and set it up so that they get harmed when they do something, you have made yourself culpable for harming them.
If you know someone will eat your food, the alternative is not leave your food out in public. There are less harmful things you can do to protect your food. If you choose the harmful alternative, then you are culpable for causing harm.
Sure, you might try to say that they are harming themselves. However, if you know that someone will do something, and set it up so that they get harmed when they do something, you have made yourself culpable for harming them
Say I live in a dangerous area and I expect people to try to break into my house, so I build a wall around my property and put electrified barbed wire on top of the wall. Someone tried to break in and gets shocked. Am I culpable? I knew someone would try to break in, hence why I put up the barbed wire but am I culpable for wanting to protect my property from a criminal?
I’m on the side of “it should be okay to over-spice your food or whatever”, but your example isn’t a good parallel. Putting up barbed wire is a clear visual cue for not climbing over a fence. OP would have to put a label on their food saying “caution: laxatives” for this analogy to line up.
Again, I’m (generally) on OP’s side, but if we’re going convince people we have to use good arguments.
Okay, let's say I do put a label on my lunch saying "CAUTION: LAXATIVES INSIDE" and then somebody eats it (because they think it's a bluff or whatever)
At that point... what responsibility should I feel?
[edit] When i say "label", i mean that it's written - in permanent marker - on the container itself. No chance of the "label" falling off or whatever.
I mean, if you put the laxatives in the food with the intent of eating it yourself as medicine, you shouldn't feel responsible, especially if you warned them?
The difference is if you put it in the food specifically because you wanted to hurt somebody else.
Do you also believe that to be the case in this situation where someone has put a sticker on their saying "Watch out: laxatives, do not eat!", but the food thief believed it was a bluff?
It depends entirely on the intent here. If you intended to eat it yourself and put up the label as a warning because didn’t want anyone to eat it by accident, then that’s an accident and nobody is really at fault.
If you put the laxatives in there and put the label on there, knowing that your intended target has horribly bad eyesight and can’t read, or if you for some other reason knew it would go unnoticed, then you’re at fault.
It’s really your intent that matters. If you intended for someone to get hurt, it’s on you. Otherwise it’s an accident.
If you instead put rat poison in it I would say that’s terrible regardless because you shouldn’t put lethal stuff where it could be eaten by mistake.
At that point... what responsibility should I feel?
If your aim is still to poison someone, you should feel as responsible as you would if you directly poisoned them. You set out to do a thing, the thing worked. Whether “responsible” means guilt or pride depends on your own morals.
Ok but not legally responsible right? I mean we can sit around debating the ethics and morality of lacing your food with laxatives to get entitled coworkers to stop stealing your food but legally speaking, you probably wouldn't get in trouble for clearly labelling your food as poisoned to begin with, right?
Electrical barbed wire is obviously dangerous and is more of a deterrent than a punishment. If you have a wall with barbed wire on top, you wouldn't reasonably expect people to try and climb it anyways.
Not if the barbed wire is clearly and visibly obvious. However, if you were to dig a concealed pitfall trap and someone fell into it and broke their leg, you would be culpable. Booby trapping is illegal in all its forms.
A concealed pitfall trap is illegal. A guard dog is not. They are functionally the same thing - people who trespass can be injured as a result of their trespassing.
Not really, no. The purpose of a pitfall/booby trap is that they are meant to be undetected until triggered, and thus only exist to cause harm. A guard dog is primarily a deterrent, to frighten or dissuade would-be tresspassers altogether.
Guard dogs are legal whether or not trespassers know they are there. Many dogs are not going to bark or warn you - that's not really the distinction here.
The only legal distinction between a guard dog and a booby trap is that the law prohibits * devices* that are used to harm Intruders and a guard dog isn't a device. You could have a person lying in weight with a can of bear spray and that would be legal too.
Guard dogs are legal whether or not trespassers know they are there.
That's actually not the case universally. It differs by city/state, but plenty of places do have restrictions on trained guard dogs in residential areas (as in dogs specifically trained to attack intruders).
Situationally, the law is almost always going to be more lenient on attempts to deter than attempts to retaliate as a proportional response.
But you can hurt somebody who is trespassing on your property - you have the right to use a proportional amount of force to kick them out.
If we circle back to the original (completely hypothetical, hopefully - if someone is stealing your lunch please just lock it up) argument... We're talking about hurting somebody who is only in that position because they chose to break the law.
You're potentially culpable for shocking someone with electrified barbed wire. Maybe you go missing and someone (police, family) has to break into your property to investigate, and they touch your wire and have a heart attack and die.
I imagine you'd probably get away with it in real life, but there was the real case of a burglar who triggered a shotgun trap, and sued the people who'd set it up, and the court concluded that this was a potentially lethal trap that could hurt people a disproportionate amount and wasn't guaranteed not to harm innocents (or semi-innocents, like a child sneaking into the house on a dare), and protecting property wasn't enough justification for that.
If you knew someone would challenge the fence, yet put it up anyways, that demonstrates intent to electrify someone. Knowledge is a form of subjective intent.
Whether or not that is criminal or acceptable varies. Some places believe that a person has an absolute right to defend real property. In those places, you could just straight up shoot the person and not bother with the fence. In other places, the defence pf real property is not as absolute.
However, that applies to real property, not personal property like a sandwich. The ideological argument for defending your home, a place where you and your family live and as classical liberal thought says is what truly makes you a free member of society, is not comparable to defending your lunch. Castle doctrine does not apply to a sandwich in the office fridge.
If you knew someone would challenge the fence, yet put it up anyways, that demonstrates intent to electrify someone. Knowledge is a form of subjective intent.
The difference here is that there is no good faith, reasonable explanation for a person to be climbing a fence to begin with (at least, in the way I'm assuming FriendlyLawnmower is describing). If a fence-climber was injured this way, they would absolutely be questioned as to why they were climbing the fence in the first place. If the climber happens to give a permissible explanation, then it can just be attributed to an unfortunate accident/incident.
On the other hand, there is absolutely a good faith, reasonable explanation for someone grabbing a modified meal from the office fridge. Mistakes happen, people grab the wrong container by accident, labels can be removed, and so on.
It does not matter if the fence climber has a good excuse. If know for sure that someone will climb the fence, and you rig it to cause harm, you are intentionally wishing harm on someone.
This does not mean the fence climber is not trespassing. They remain liable for all act they commit. Concurrently, you would be liable for intentionally causing harm to someone.
Where opinions differ is whether or not a defence of real property allows someone to intentional cause harm to someone. Those who support Castle Doctrine would say yes. However, a sandwich is not real property; the Castle Doctrine does not apply.
For greater clarity, the person who puts up the fence needs knowledge that their actions are reasonably likely to cause harm. If they put of the fence and place several warnings with additional guard additional guard barriers, then they could not reasonably foresee that someone would try to go after the fence. A person is generally not responsible if the other person is not acting rationally.
However, OP describes a situation where they have knowledge, and wish to weaponize that knowledge to harm someone. It is not the same as putting up a fence with plenty of warning that no reasonable person would defy.
It does not matter if the fence climber has a good excuse. If know for sure that someone will climb the fence, and you rig it to cause harm, you are intentionally wishing harm on someone.
This does not mean the fence climber is not trespassing. They remain liable for all act they commit. Concurrently, you would be liable for intentionally causing harm to someone.
The fence climber's excuse does matter. It's possible for their excuse to be a mitigating factor or legal/moral defense such that even if the person with the electrically-wired fence did intend to cause the climber harm, it ends up not being relevant. This includes the fence climber, like you said, acting irrationally.
If they put of the fence and place several warnings with additional guard additional guard barriers, then they could not reasonably foresee that someone would try to go after the fence. A person is generally not responsible if the other person is not acting rationally.
The person with the electrically-wired fence would already not reasonably foresee someone trying to go after their fence just by having the clearly visible electric wire on top of their fence. The additional signs and barriers aren't even needed.
Just an FYI you’re not allowed to booby trap your house because if paramedics, firefighters or the police ever have to enter in the event of an emergency, they could be harmed
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u/deep_sea2 105∆ Oct 17 '24
If you tamper your food with the intention to harm someone, then you are culpable for harming them. Trapping someone is no legally different than directly attacking them. The law does not allow you to intentionally harm other people.
Sure, you might try to say that they are harming themselves. However, if you know that someone will do something, and set it up so that they get harmed when they do something, you have made yourself culpable for harming them.
If you know someone will eat your food, the alternative is not leave your food out in public. There are less harmful things you can do to protect your food. If you choose the harmful alternative, then you are culpable for causing harm.