Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

“Prof. defends right to send feces”

Good news for poo-flingers: a Colorado lawyer is arguing (on behalf of a client facing misdemeanor charges) that there’s a First Amendment right to deliver dog droppings to someone’s office as a means of political self-expression, at least if the lucky recipient is a member of Congress. (AP/Boston Globe, Jan. 18).

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6 Comments

  • Well, if she wins I wouldn’t want to be the poor slob who has to clean her front porch…

    • By mojo

  • Won’t the freedom of speech angle get trumped by the public safety issue (I’m assuming you could possibly become ill from handling dog feces).

    • By SJTNT

  • Put aside the health risk to humans from dog feces:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dog_diseases

    The message-in-a-smell is not speech. It is chemicals entering the nose and reaching the olfactory epithelium and neurons. The intentional act is at best, a nuisance act, at worst, a chemical battery of the receiver, an intentional tort and possibly a crime.

    Is spraying acid at someone free speech? The difference between spraying acid at someone, and having noxious chemicals waft into someone’s nasal passages is one of velocity of propulsion and injuriousness of battery. Both are battery.

  • Maybe if she carved the poo into a statue…

    • By markm

  • Supremacy Claus,

    While I think I would support that line of reasoning, I’m 99% sure that it’s not actual policy anywhere in the US, or smoking anywhere in public would already not exist due to criminal prosecution of those doing it.

    • By Deoxy

  • Deoxy: Smoke from a cigarette is an unintentional nuisance. Blowing it at someone’s face is more like sending feces. Is blowing smoke in someone’s face protected free speech?

    Which is worse, inflicting a coughing spell, nausea, or a shove?

    The lawyers will be searching for cases on that. Here. A starter case for the lawyers.

    Leichtman v. W.L.W. Jacor Communications, Inc. Ohio Ct. App., No. C-920922.

    Radio host blows smoke at anti-smoking advocate. Case may proceed. “No matter how trivial the incident, a battery is actionable even if the damages are only one dollar.”

    Even the court could not believe what they had just repeated from standard law doctrines. They tried to not look foolish with, “This case emphasizes the need for some form of alternative dispute resolution operating totally outside the court system as a means to provide an attentive ear to the parties and a resolution of disputes in a nominal case.”