Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition
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@PleegWat AFAIK in French law there is no crime without criminal intent (
).However, while this is the broad principle there are some exceptions (typically, but not only, carelessness) and decades (probably a bit more than 2 centuries, actually) of jurisprudence that temper that principle.
Still, I would guess that buying entirely unknowingly a stolen car isn't recel.
However the car being stolen probably makes the sale itself invalid and thus you can be asked to give it back. In which case I assume you can then ask the vendor for your money back, and travel up the chain as far as required. In practice, I assume it's unlikely there is ever more than one step in this chain, and you "asking for a refund" is likely going to be you asking for damages in the trial of the vendor (how likely you are to get anything... I have no idea).
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@remi Typically, all of that applies. The usual theory is that when you're paying €500 for a €5000 car, this implies you knew the car was stolen.
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@PleegWat yeah, the "carelessness" part also covers that here, I think.
I'm not sure how it really goes in court, though. I assume your defence lawyer would try and point out that the price itself doesn't mark the intent (i.e. knowledge that it was stolen), that it could be cheap for other reasons etc. Ultimately, I suspect in this case that the prosecutor would only claim that you knew to prevent you from claiming any damages (through e.g. victims' compensation funds), rather than to truly try and convict you.
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@PleegWat yeah, the "carelessness" part also covers that here, I think.
I'm not sure how it really goes in court, though. I assume your defence lawyer would try and point out that the price itself doesn't mark the intent (i.e. knowledge that it was stolen), that it could be cheap for other reasons etc. Ultimately, I suspect in this case that the prosecutor would only claim that you knew to prevent you from claiming any damages (through e.g. victims' compensation funds), rather than to truly try and convict you.
There's also presumably the issue of not having the paperwork for the car, which you'd need to take to the DMV (speaking of Virginia, at least, which is where this happened) to get it transferred to you.
We also have the Chinese whispers effect of reading a news story where events have been filtered through the police telling a journalist who then wrote the story.
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@boomzilla said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
There's also presumably the issue of not having the paperwork for the car
That would definitely be a huge red flag here, so much so that you simply couldn't buy the car (or claim to have bought it). I assumed that some sort of valid-looking paperwork was available (what, reading TFA? are you kidding?), because without it there is simply no "sale" possible here.
What happens here when you buy a car is that the seller gives the buyer the "grey card" (that's how the official paperwork with the owner's name is informally called), filling and tearing off one part that they keep themselves (to get some receipt of the sale). The buyer then has a couple of weeks (?) to go to the equivalent of DMV (online nowadays, miracle of modern technology!) and give this partial paperwork in exchange for a new one with their own name.
(not included: countless forms to fill, fees to pay and weeks of delays, of course)
So to "sell" a stolen car to an unsuspecting buyer, you must either have the original paperwork and concocted a suitably believable story to explain why it's not in your name, or made a fake one. If you buy a car without this "gray card," you'll have a hard time claiming that the car is yours, and an even harder one claiming that you thought the sale was legit.
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It's probably different for cars, but under the (American) UCC (Uniform Commercial Code), if you buy a used TV set from a dealer, and then the police discover that it's stolen and confiscate the TV set to return it to its original owner, the dealer does not have to reimburse you, provided they were following their normal practices and did not know the set was stolen. Some businesses might reimburse you out of customer relations, but they do not have to.
Presumably, if you bought the set on store credit, you would still have to pay the store for the stolen set they sold you which the police confiscated.
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@jinpa Fortunately there are some lawyers who will happily tell you that the dealer does have to reimburse you, because they breached the implied warranty of title: once you purchased the set from them, you would become its legal owner.
Is it worth it for a TV set? Absolutely not; even filing the complaint is more expensive than the set itself. But there are things that are worth it for.
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
grey card
That sounds an awful lot like what we in the States call a title: https://www.in.gov/bmv/titles/
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Great Dunmow: Steam engine crashes into living room of house
Witnesses say the historical vehicle appeared to suddenly accelerate in the Market Place in Great Dunmow.
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@boomzilla said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
There's also presumably the issue of not having the paperwork for the car
That would definitely be a huge red flag here, so much so that you simply couldn't buy the car (or claim to have bought it). I assumed that some sort of valid-looking paperwork was available (what, reading TFA? are you kidding?), because without it there is simply no "sale" possible here.
What happens here when you buy a car is that the seller gives the buyer the "grey card" (that's how the official paperwork with the owner's name is informally called), filling and tearing off one part that they keep themselves (to get some receipt of the sale). The buyer then has a couple of weeks (?) to go to the equivalent of DMV (online nowadays, miracle of modern technology!) and give this partial paperwork in exchange for a new one with their own name.
(not included: countless forms to fill, fees to pay and weeks of delays, of course)
So to "sell" a stolen car to an unsuspecting buyer, you must either have the original paperwork and concocted a suitably believable story to explain why it's not in your name, or made a fake one. If you buy a car without this "gray card," you'll have a hard time claiming that the car is yours, and an even harder one claiming that you thought the sale was legit.
I've heard a story where they sold stolen cars using the paperwork from cars which were totalled in a traffic accident.
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@PleegWat said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@boomzilla said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
There's also presumably the issue of not having the paperwork for the car
That would definitely be a huge red flag here, so much so that you simply couldn't buy the car (or claim to have bought it). I assumed that some sort of valid-looking paperwork was available (what, reading TFA? are you kidding?), because without it there is simply no "sale" possible here.
What happens here when you buy a car is that the seller gives the buyer the "grey card" (that's how the official paperwork with the owner's name is informally called), filling and tearing off one part that they keep themselves (to get some receipt of the sale). The buyer then has a couple of weeks (?) to go to the equivalent of DMV (online nowadays, miracle of modern technology!) and give this partial paperwork in exchange for a new one with their own name.
(not included: countless forms to fill, fees to pay and weeks of delays, of course)
So to "sell" a stolen car to an unsuspecting buyer, you must either have the original paperwork and concocted a suitably believable story to explain why it's not in your name, or made a fake one. If you buy a car without this "gray card," you'll have a hard time claiming that the car is yours, and an even harder one claiming that you thought the sale was legit.
I've heard a story where they sold stolen cars using the paperwork from cars which were totalled in a traffic accident.
That's why you should also check the vin. Preferably one of the hard to replace ones, like in the firmware.
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@PleegWat AFAIK in French law there is no crime without criminal intent (
).However, while this is the broad principle there are some exceptions (typically, but not only, carelessness) and decades (probably a bit more than 2 centuries, actually) of jurisprudence that temper that principle.
I think even knowingly buying stolen goods probably isn't a crime in French.
Or when that Chinese girl "buy" a house from lockpicker when the house owner visit her relative for 3 days, she would have been arrested.
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@boomzilla said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
journalist who then wrote the story.
Unreliable narrator.
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@boomzilla said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Great Dunmow: Steam engine crashes into living room of house
Witnesses say the historical vehicle appeared to suddenly accelerate in the Market Place in Great Dunmow.
It sounds like Donmow wasn't so great that day.
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@cheong said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
I think even knowingly buying stolen goods probably isn't a crime in French.
No, it definitely is a crime (recel in French).
you did not "buy" the thing since a sale is a contract that can't legally happen if the "seller" is not the rightful owner of the thing. But you end up being knowingly in possession of stolen goods, which is the definition of recel.Recel is often mentioned when "big fishes" in criminal circles are arrested -- they never e.g. touch drug themselves, or kill anyone, but they might drive a stolen car (which officially they'll claim to have bought "second hand").
Or when that Chinese girl "buy" a house from lockpicker when the house owner visit her relative for 3 days, she would have been arrested.
I have never heard that story, but just from that I can tell you that no, she did not "buy" a house in France in a couple of days. Buying a house takes much, much longer than that and faking a property title is... I won't say impossible, I'm sure that must have happened at least once, but so uncommonly rare that I can't remember it even being a plot device in a modern-days crime story.
If she did know that the house had been broken into, then that makes her an accomplice (of... some sort of burglary rather than theft, I guess?) and she should have been arrested (if not... I don't know why). But it sounds to me more likely that she didn't know (why would you knowingly "buy" a house that you know the rightful owner will be back in a few days???) and thus she was just a victim, like the owner.
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This post is deleted!
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Or when that Chinese girl "buy" a house from lockpicker when the house owner visit her relative for 3 days, she would have been arrested.
If she did know that the house had been broken into, then that makes her an accomplice (of... some sort of burglary rather than theft, I guess?) and she should have been arrested (if not... I don't know why). But it sounds to me more likely that she didn't know (why would you knowingly "buy" a house that you know the rightful owner will be back in a few days???) and thus she was just a victim, like the owner.
Yup. That's exactly what happened. The Chinese girl got kicked out of her previous renter because she can't pay the rent, then she met someone who told her that he know a house which the owner is not in the city. If she would pay a small sum of money and promise will not get him into trouble, he can lockpick the house to let her live there.
So she paid almost all the cash she had, have him picked the lock, and entered the house. The man left her after the lock was picked open. In the house she found more cash that enables her to replace the lock, buy more food, and mail the utility companies to switch the names to her.
When the house owner come back, she can't go in with her original key. She tried to get help from police but there's no proof that she owns the home because she has no access to house deed that locked inside the house, and the utility companies no longer has her name on the address.
After the case goes to media, skipping all the details I can't remember, the police issued notice that the Chinese girl have to vacate the house in 3 days. And 3 days later, after the house owner get back her house, she found lots of things inside are severely damaged and that includes a drawing of her mother.
From what I can remember, the Chinese girl never got arrested for all these things.
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@cheong said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
So she paid almost all the cash she had, have him picked the lock, and entered the house. The man left her after the lock was picked open. In the house she found more cash that enables her to replace the lock, buy more food, and mail the utility companies to switch the names to her.
Wow. That is awful. Any source about it? I'd be curious to read what might have been said in French sources (i.e. likely more details) but with with so little to start with, the
is too strong.When the house owner come back, she can't go in with her original key. She tried to get help from police but there's no proof that she owns the home because she has no access to house deed that locked inside the house, and the utility companies no longer has her name on the address.
That part seems a bit wrong to me. I mean, I understand that police would have asked proof in the immediate minutes (hours...) following her return, and indeed at that point she might have very little to prove herself -- all her papers might be inside, and even ID documents that have an address (e.g. identity card) don't necessarily have the full address (such as flat number) or an up-to-date address (you're supposed to update it when moving but mostly people don't bother). So at the minute she came back, yeah, she was probably fucked.
However in the next few days, it should be fairly easy to get proof. For one thing, all property deeds are primarily archived at public notaries (you might not even have a copy, I think I don't) and they're public documents so she could easily get a copy from there. Similarly, the taxman knows who has to pay property taxes, and you can trust them to not forget this information (since that's how they get money!). So again, an easy route to get a proof-of-ownership. There are other ways, probably less authoritative but still enough.
But most, if not all, of those will take time, hopefully a couple of days, more likely a couple of weeks. And to get police to officially come and evict someone, you need a court order, which means that you have to start court proceedings, which again is going to take at the very least a few weeks.
So yeah, in the meantime, the owner was probably pretty much fucked. That's the stuff of nightmares.
From what I can remember, the Chinese girl never got arrested for all these things.
That part seems horribly wrong (I'm not saying this did not happen, just that this is not how it should have happened). I can't imagine how, after what you said, she couldn't have been arrested for at the very least the money stolen (and spent on a new lock) and other damages done inside the house. Plus of course various other criminal charges. This is where I'd like to see some source to try and track down (in French) the full story.
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I couldn't find any article on that specific case, but I'm not really surprised. Even when you can provide proof that someone is occupying your house or apartment illegally, getting them officially evicted is notoriously long and difficult in France. So much that it's not rare for victims to use, ahem... less legal means of getting their property back (and sometimes getting sued for it!).
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@Zerosquare yeah, evicting someone is tricky and lengthy. And if the person was smart enough to hide all the most obvious signs of "this is not my house" (e.g. changing locks and utility bills!), this is going to drag on even more.
But ultimately, there are very clear and mostly impossible to falsify indicators of who is the rightful owner, and a well-established, if lengthy, legal route to get there (in most cases... exceptions always exist). So I doubt the part of "appeal to media was needed to get something happening," it's more likely that something was going to happen, it just took time. But I can let that part aside as more perception than facts, in an (at least) 2nd-hand story that's not very important.
The part that I would like to know more about is the woman not being prosecuted in any way. Because that sounds legally obviously wrong (again, not saying it didn't happen, but... why?), and something important-enough that even a 2nd hand story would get it right.
Unless it didn't (maybe prosecution just dragged on slowly, as is sadly the norm in France), and the whole story is just "evicting someone is hard" which, yeah, it is -- but mostly because it requires a court order (and that's a good thing!) and that, sadly again, French justice is slooooow.
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@cheong said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
So she paid almost all the cash she had, have him picked the lock, and entered the house. The man left her after the lock was picked open. In the house she found more cash that enables her to replace the lock, buy more food, and mail the utility companies to switch the names to her.
Wow. That is awful. Any source about it? I'd be curious to read what might have been said in French sources (i.e. likely more details) but with with so little to start with, the
is too strong.I'm unable to find it, but that "news" happened quite some years ago (like 10+ years)
When the house owner come back, she can't go in with her original key. She tried to get help from police but there's no proof that she owns the home because she has no access to house deed that locked inside the house, and the utility companies no longer has her name on the address.
That part seems a bit wrong to me. I mean, I understand that police would have asked proof in the immediate minutes (hours...) following her return, and indeed at that point she might have very little to prove herself -- all her papers might be inside, and even ID documents that have an address (e.g. identity card) don't necessarily have the full address (such as flat number) or an up-to-date address (you're supposed to update it when moving but mostly people don't bother). So at the minute she came back, yeah, she was probably fucked.
No. The girl just hide herself in the house whenever people comes and pretend there's noone inside. The incident only got uncovered because she videoed everything and published on Chinese social media, which is then posted to other social media like Youtube. And someone who know the house owner recognized that could be her house and notified her. The councilor who's helping the house owner then use the video as ground to make the police move.
Roughly something like that.
However in the next few days, it should be fairly easy to get proof. For one thing, all property deeds are primarily archived at public notaries (you might not even have a copy, I think I don't) and they're public documents so she could easily get a copy from there. Similarly, the taxman knows who has to pay property taxes, and you can trust them to not forget this information (since that's how they get money!). So again, an easy route to get a proof-of-ownership. There are other ways, probably less authoritative but still enough.
I don't know whether the deed records were digitalized then. Property tax record could be a way, but it could also be that house owner actually sold the house and the new buyer didn't update the tax payment (remember it was just only 3 days?) So the tax record could show the house is related to her, but is not definitive evidence that she currently owns the house.
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@cheong said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
I don't know whether the deed records were digitalized then. Property tax record could be a way, but it could also be that house owner actually sold the house and the new buyer didn't update the tax payment (remember it was just only 3 days?) So the tax record could show the house is related to her, but is not definitive evidence that she currently owns the house.
No, nothing in that part can be what happened. It's irrelevant whether deeds are digitalized or not, the official and legally binding document has always ever been (for... at least a couple of centuries?) held by public notaries, not by individuals. And (and both points are obviously related) a sale cannot happen without a notary recording it. So it doesn't matter for how long you've owned the house, a day or a century, just go to the notary and you'll get the most official possible document proving it. For all intents and purposes, this document cannot be falsified, and certainly not by a random thief (you can probably create some kind of complicated legal chain with trust funds and donations and inheritance and sales and slip a forged document in the middle of that, but it's complicated white collar fraud, and likely hard to pull out without the active complicity of a corrupt notary).
I suspect there never was any doubt as to whom the house belonged, but that it just took time first for the lawful owner to first notice the illegal occupancy (as you say, if the occupant was hiding etc. and the owner was away), then for the owner to start the legal procedure (make an official complaint, gather official documents...), then for a judge to rule on that (the ruling would have been quick, but justice is awfully slow so it could be months before a hearing happened!), and finally for police to execute the decision (assuming there was no appeal, and there are also rules such as e.g. a prohibition on evicting people during winter, so that can push back things a few more months).
So I can easily believe that it took months for the rightful owner to get their house back, sadly. But I have a hard time believing there ever was a doubt as to who was the owner, or whether they could get their house back (one day...).
I'm still puzzled as to how the illegal occupant managed to escape prosecution. I think even if she claimed to have believed she had purchased the house legally, she would still have been prosecuted (whether the prosecution would succeed is of course a different thing). But then again,
do happen, so... maybe this was one?
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
I'm still puzzled as to how the illegal occupant managed to escape prosecution. I think even if she claimed to have believed she had purchased the house legally, she would still have been prosecuted (whether the prosecution would succeed is of course a different thing). But then again,
do happen, so... maybe this was one?Hard to say without knowing all the circumstances of the illegal occupant. That's a matter for the prosecutor's office and the police.
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@dkf yes, which is why I was hoping to get a bit more details, enough to allow to further tracks this into French sources, which are likely to be where all the information would be. I can imagine a few things that might have led up to that result, either with weird combinations of circumstances, an additional "small" detail that changes everything or plain old
. But there's no way to know.But it sounds unlikely we'll get enough details for that, that's OK, I'm not really blaming @cheong or anyone else here (I get that it's a story that he vaguely remembers, nothing more).
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
I'm not really blaming @cheong or anyone else here
I blame @dkf .
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@Gribnit You may blame me for cheesecake.
Or donuts. I don't mind.
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@Zerosquare said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Even when you can provide proof that someone is occupying your house or apartment illegally, getting them officially evicted is notoriously long and difficult in France.
I'm confused as to why this would be considered an eviction in the first place. The person who took over the house never had a legit reason to stay, so I'd assume that in the eyes of the law they are trespassing in the apartment, not living there. As opposed to someone who had a legit reason once upon a time, such as a renter who didn't leave.
I mean, if the police catch a burglar inside a house, surely they'll haul the criminal out immediately instead of filing for an eviction?
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@acrow I expect it comes down to legal specifics around squatting. Some places, I understand, are rather lenient towards adverse possession of real estate.
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@acrow said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
The person who took over the house never had a legit reason to stay
The story, as recounted initially, says that this person changed the locks and had the utility bills put in their name (now that they could do that is probably another
but not really a huge surprise in practice...), and that the lawful owner did not have any strong proof-of-ownership document with them when they came back from holidays (which isn't surprising, why would you have that with you when going on holidays?!?).So at the moment the police was called, it was not obvious that the person inside the house did not have a reason to be there. And to establish that, most likely a legal procedure had to be started, which means it went down the route of eviction. Well, I'm guessing, since we don't have details, but that sounds likely.
If that had not been the case, it would mean anyone could knock on your door and say "oh this is my house, I can't prove it right now and you have utility bills to prove otherwise but police is still going to immediately evict you based on my word only" which would be an even bigger
.(
@Applied-Mediocrity ... or maybe 
?)
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Rock Creek Parkway 3/15/23
On March 15, 2023, two guys were out drinking in Washington D.C. They did the right thing and called a Lyft driver in an Accord for a ride home. A few minutes later, though, all three were dead, when a Lexus SUV with 44 outstanding tickets totaling $17,000 in upaid fines fleeing a police stop...
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@blek The driver is one lucky bastard:
5,000 lb+ poles thrown through cab of truck on I-275, driver uninjured
A truck driver escaped uninjured after two Duke metal/concrete poles weighing more than 5,000 pounds were thrown through the cab of his tractor-trailer.
The driver who cut him off is possibly also a lucky bastard for not getting the poles up his (or her) ass...
In any event, if you think your straps are tight enough, crank them down further.
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This could go into several threads but, seriously,
is this argument by the lawyers?
Tesla lawyers claim Elon Musk’s past statements about self-driving safety could just be deepfakes
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24614205/1251952181.jpg)
A new way to avoid liability: the deepfake defense
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@Rhywden rrrrrwwwwaaaaaarrrrow
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@lolwhat said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
What are we looking at there? Is that a real animal? If so, what kind?
Is it a deep fake?
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@jinpa a Siberian tiger.
Woman demands £175,000 from park after her mother was eaten by a tiger
A Chinese woman whose mother was mauled to death by a protected tiger at a safari park has demanded a 1.55 million yuan payout (£175,000) from the park. The court case started today.
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@loopback0 said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@jinpa a Siberian tiger.
Woman demands £175,000 from park after her mother was eaten by a tiger
A Chinese woman whose mother was mauled to death by a protected tiger at a safari park has demanded a 1.55 million yuan payout (£175,000) from the park. The court case started today.
The park should counter-sue with "unauthorized feeding of the wildlife"
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@loopback0 said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@jinpa a Siberian tiger.
Woman demands £175,000 from park after her mother was eaten by a tiger
A Chinese woman whose mother was mauled to death by a protected tiger at a safari park has demanded a 1.55 million yuan payout (£175,000) from the park. The court case started today.
They got out of the car in a tiger enclosure, and now they blame the park? This sounds more like the USA than China. And the excuse that they thought they'd left the enclosure seems a bit thin when there was a tiger right there.
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@Carnage said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
This sounds more like the USA than China.
See: even the Chinese government is currently unable to stop such shabby western habits from spreading in their paradise.
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Don't extort powerful brake when driving heavy goods vehicles, especially you have heavy goods not properly fastened on it.
When a HGV brake to stop in front of red traffic light, the 9 tons roll of steel sheets roll forward and kill the driver.
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@Luhmann
So they found the muppet turns out the snorfiets wasn't registered or insured... The railway company is going to have a field day reclaiming damages because of the emergency braking and hours of subsequent delays
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Somebody was in a hell of a hurry. I'm sitting at the light, he's behind me. Pulls around me to the right, and does this.
RedLightRunner.mp4
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@dcon said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Somebody was in a hell of a hurry. I'm sitting at the light, he's behind me. Pulls around me to the right, and does this.
RedLightRunner.mp4One can only hope that when Darwin catches up with that guy, he doesn't take others with him.
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@dcon said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Somebody was in a hell of a hurry. I'm sitting at the light, he's behind me. Pulls around me to the right, and does this.
RedLightRunner.mp4I had a similar thing happen a few years ago. I was stopped at a red light, in the right lane waiting to go straight. Someone pulled up behind me, sat there for a few seconds, then went over into the left lane, passed me (still at the red light) and turned right.
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VA Police Officer Narrowly Escapes As Teen Driver Slams Into Traffic Stop: Video
A Fairfax County police officer on a routine traffic stop was nearly struck and killed by a teenage driver traveling at over 120 mph.
Crazy Clips on Twitter
