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The Law's an Ass
BBC NEWS | England | Kent | Rapist sues landlady from prison
A hairdresser has said she hopes to appeal after a convicted rapist sued her from jail when she cleared out the flat he rented above one of her salons. Errrrrrmmmmmmmmmm.........the law goes mad again!!!! :eek: |
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Says in the report that she should have sought legal advice as laws are in place to stop landlords taking hasty action.
If your tenant gets a life sentence for a crime it can hardly be considered hasty to make other arrangements regarding the property you are renting them. She even put his stuff into storage an was forking out 60 brick a month for the privilege ( wonder how long she was thinking of keeping that up ) I would have just ordered a skip and dumped the lot in. Aye, the Law is an Ass :( |
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If he wasn't a rapist and he had simply gone on business for a few months it would be seen as right. He's paying the rent and she has no right to terminate the contract unless he breaches it, and nothing there suggests he has. Hate to say it, but seen as I am more inclined to think this way than the ordinary newspaper reader I will say it anyway, and that isn't the law being an ass at all. |
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Again the law helps the guilty n humps the innocent!!!! When he went down he should have lost all his rights.
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God, why didn't I think of that? She should have stuck to the law herself and consulted a solicitor before taking it upon herself to bag up someone's belongings. I'm sure she could have rang the police to report him missing and have found out where he was, and then proceeded rather than assuming he wasn't coming back. I would like to think I would show concern about someone just not being around for so long even if their rent was being paid to me. A lot of rent is just paid by direct debit these days, for all she knew he could have been dead somewhere. |
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So he sues and say he wins ok; his victim then sues him; she wins and gets the money he won from suing his landlady. Who loses then? When he comes out he would have to leave the area any. The moral of the mess should be to consult an expert when in a situation that mirrors this one.
Then again I am a guy so what do I know. |
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whats it with these tories turning liberal? why dont you just join the liberal party,or are you just after their votes..........:rolleyes:
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Where does it say in that report that the convicted bloke was still paying his rent ?
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There is nothing saying he was or wasn't paying his rent, but it sounds like he certainly wasn't paying his gas and electric bills. Was she supposed to pay those for him? She didn't chuck his belongings away. He can have those back when he comes out of jail. Perhaps she should send him the bill for storage which she has been paying at a rate of £60 per month.
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As for the rent still being paid, I read it on another website but for the claim to succeed he would have had to have abided by his contract anyway, tenancy contracts are generally pretty solid in that respect, so he must have been paying otherwise there isn't a chance he would have got anyone to represent him in court.
Chances are he is on a no win no fee basis, and solicitors taking on these claims have a specific risk assessment and generally if there is a less than 61% chance of success they wont take on the case. If he hadn't been paying there wouldn't be anywhere near that high a chance of success. I can't find the page I read it on now but I'll trying to find it. Here is the page that said he used public money to fund his case though, implying legal aid. Rapist Sues Landlady From Jail; Wins Damages |
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If he had breached the contract she would've been well within her rights and he wouldn't have been successful. Anyone living in rented property should be aware of these general rights though and they are available on the government website, she wouldn't have even had to seek legal advice to know she wasn't legally able to do that. She admits herself that she should have got legal advice before doing it. |
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Does this help you and I as taxpayers.........no I don't think it does. Target the criminals.....Tag them, make them pay for the rest of their lives for the crimes they have commited. We are too soft with offenders and the victim suffers all the time. Put them on a register not only as an offender but as a debter to the individual they offended against. Lets see how much the overpaid briefs make out of that? |
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Do people realise she did this before he was actually convicted? He hadn't even been put on trial for the crime before she removed his things, he was just in custody.
What if he had been found not guilty and come home to his flat empty? If he had been found innocent people would be thinking completely different about this, but I don't think like that because I think everyone should be treated equally under the law, not rapist vs 'good citizen'. I think the decision makes sense but I can't be bothered arguing about it any further because it wont change my mind and it probably wont change yours, and it certainly wont change the decision! |
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So how long was she supposed to wait with an empty flat and food going off in the fridge due to the power supply not being on? Should she just leave it like that ad infinitum?
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She's paying for a mistake basically but unfortunately there is that little point of the law that ignorance is not a defense. I'm not saying that this is necessarily fair, but it stops people taking advantage of the law, and in respect of landlords being able to empty your home of all your belongings as they wish I'm glad that they didn't let her off otherwise other landlords might decide to do the same in favour of a more desireable occupant and that would be much more serious than this. He only won £750 or something anyway, he wont see the penny of the fee's she's having to pay so it isn't like he is going to be rolling in wealth when he gets out of prison. Blame the solicitors for the high fee's she's having to pay! |
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Oh! But he doesn't have to do that does he 'cos that would probably infringe his rights to privacy or something. So any prospective landlord/lady could be left in the same predicament. In fact, do modern rental agreements have a provision for disclosure of criminal convictions?? If not, should they?? The lady in the article states that if she'd known she wouldn't have let to him due to girls working in the salon below. Ergo - would he then have been in breach of contract for not being truthful???? As always with stories like this, we, the general public, are only really told the basics for the story. If every little thing was disclosed then maybe we would think differently. However, the man WAS convicted TO LIFE and should therefore lose all privileges. His belongings should be sold to pay for his costs in the original case. Until such time a political party actually takes the bull by the horns and says enough of the 'softly, softly' approach with the criminal element of the country then I stand by the title of this thread regarding this story - THE LAW IS AN ASS. |
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This decision was clearly based on that idea and to stop the possible creation of a loophole in tenancy agreements. Why is this story not in decent newspapers? Because the only point of the story is that he is a rapist, not the law at all. Also, she is the one that broke the law in this case, not him. If the decision was based on him being a rapist it would almost be like double jeopardy. |
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Have you been previously convicted of a crime Blazey?? I would think not (though I may be mistaken - who knows!!) Therefore your landlord would have no reason to worry over mistaken identity would he/she? Therefore why would they see the need to evict you?? Esp. as I'm sure you'd be on the phone to reassure them it was a mistake and it would be all sorted soon. We could go on all night picking holes in each others reasoning but at the end of it all this case highlights THE LAW IS AN ASS!!!! |
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It's nothing like Double Jeopardy! :confused: Quote:
Absolutely! It's not as if she sold his stuff or just chucked it out on the street. If and when he gets out of prison (life? Ha! Don't make me laugh!) it's all still there for him AT HER EXPENSE! |
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Nice to see you back Jaysay. Hope you're feeling well now.
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I agree with Blazey on this one. If she emptied the flat illegally then she should have lost in court.
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I would agree if she had disposed of the contents but she didn't she put them in storage at her own expense so although she didn't go about it as she should have done she had obviously not wanted to create a hooha if he ever came back for his stuff.
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He could have been working away and come back to find she had emptied his flat.
You can't just throw out a tenant because they have made a mess of your flat. You have to abide by the tenancy agreement and the law. There are correct ways to evict a tenant within the law. The law should and does protect both the tenant and land lord. She did not so he was within his right to sue. She lost and should have done. The only reason the story even hit the papers is because he is in jail. |
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I don't see why one should damn a law just because it doesn't conform to one's personal biases. The law is above this; that is why it works, and why it is necessary. Some say "this is a good law, because it confirms and supports what I believe; and this law is a bad law because it doesn't conform to my prejudices." They are not in fact talking about law at all, but about their own idiosyncrasies.
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I assume that the tenancy agreement was presented in court and the judge would have decided if Mrs Goymer had breached it. It has to be presumed that he thought she had because he found for the defendant. So until we know the full details we cannot say that the law was an ass or not. |
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This was a publicly-funded case. We paid for this to be brought before the Courts. I wasn’t asked whether I wanted to fund it, was anyone else ??
His rights should diminish while he is serving his time ( supposedly life in this instance ) What makes him think he will return to the flat…ahhh I know, life doesn’t mean “life” with our Courts does it. I think his Landlord did well by the man by putting his belongings into storage. |
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I agree a prisoner’s rights should diminish whilst in jail but the reality is that they don’t appear to. But if the landlady breached the tenancy agreement then she was in the wrong. |
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He wasn't convicted of any crime when she decided to put his things into storage. The fact he won his claim suggests that the only person who breached the contract was her, therefore she is legally in the wrong. The fact that he is a rapist doesn't matter.
I can't put it any simpler than what I already have done. I just study the law, I don't make it, and I certainly don't make the decisions, but in this case I personally would've made the same decision. |
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i cant see in the article if when they say he paid his rent it means he went to work and paid his rent or if he claimed the rent from the council which realisticly woudl mean that everyone else paid his rent and not him
if he was on benefits then the council if notified of his conviction would have stopped the rent been paid but as what quite often happens people go to prison and the rent still gets paid no matter what the contract says as soon as a person is sent to prison the landlord should be able to throw out the contents of the property after an acceptable amount of time to allow arrangements to be made bythe tennants friends or family to remove the contents but up until conviction no action should be allowed to be made as the accused may be found not guilty |
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It's pretty simple really, she didn't follow standard procedure so she was forced to cough up. The judge couldn't treat the guy like a rapist, he had to treat him like an ordinary citizen and award damages, and the fee's have to be paid by someone and it's also the norm that the losing side pays the fees. I'm still trying to graps what is unconservative of me agreeing to this case, contract law is centuries old and I am not saying lets be lenient with it, I'm saying keep to it. |
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Also, it's an interesting point about if he was still claiming housing benefit whilst in jail and if not who was paying the rent? He could find himself on dodgy ground if claiming benefits he wasn't entitled to due to being in jail. This might just come back to bite him. I can't help feeling that I hope it does. |
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And how long is life? A few more years added onto that wouldn't go amiss. Or maybe a huge fine which strips him of all his assetts not just the award he got from this case but the bailiffs selling all those possessions so the landlady doesn't have to keep paying for their storage. (I wonder what happens to those costs now anyway?) I'm sure he will care about losing everything. He cares about losing his flat doesn't he?
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She has nobody to blame but herself and the people you should all be blaming is her for not using her head. Past debt collector and land lady? Yes I'm sure she's charming... when she wants your money of course. She should have known better. |
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As recently as the 12th century, law was "rediscovered" in Bologna. And it is this rediscovery which eventually led to the centralized state, replacing the chaos that followed the collapse of the western empire. This, I know, sounds trivial, and perhaps it is; however, what it leads to is the inescapable conclusion that the State and the Law are inseparable. So, whether or not the law is sometimes asinine is irrelevant; what is important is that it is necessary; and that to be effective, it has to be followed to the letter. Evidently, the woman in question did not consider this.
Of course, we could always re-introduce trial by ordeal, or by combat:rolleyes: |
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I concede that we have to abide by the law but it's situations like this where people stand back and say "The law is a ass" that leads to laws being repealed amended etc - law is not static.
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The only reason it made it into the paper is because he's a convicted rapist, hence why it's not in the law pages on the broadsheet papers. It's not even news. |
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I'm never going to agree that there should be one set of laws for one group of people and another for people we don't like.
America got round this by building a nice little place in Cuba. I'm sure we could do the same if you really want to start avoiding laws. Though lets bear in mind that the cost to america for cases against them for fale imprisonment in that lovely little place in Cuba costs them far more than it costs for a straight forward tenancy disagreement. If we're basing it on the matter of cost then we should at least be realistic. Especially when we start getting victims of injustice coming out of prison after being wrongly convicted of a crime and claiming they were in fact innocent, therefore still protected under the same rights as you and I and that they've been tortured day in day out wrongly. Or we could just treat them like human beings, or at least domestic animals and then at least we don't have to face a very difficult mess when we have wrongly imprisoned people. |
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So Blazey.. I would presume you would like to be a defence lawyer?
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I'm not impartial, I am a human being. I set standards for myself and I'm certainly not a relativist. For me my politics is independent of my view on the law. Politics is simply a matter of preference, whereas the law is to be followed, whether it be literally or liberally, whatever produces the better consequences. I repeat that I am only human, so I am not perfection nor do I think I am even close to it. What else can I say? My God is my judge, not you or any other member of this forum. |
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I'm a 19yr old law student who votes for the tory party, I'm catholic, I dye my hair from blonde to dark brown, I sit on my laptop most of the time and to be quite frank that is about it. Nothing you can gain from me so why do you bother trying to get a reaction out of me? Are you really that bored? |
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I find it sad that you dislike me just because of the party I vote for. How would you decide whether you liked me if I didn't declare my politics? |
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My fees to go to uni last year were £3070.
This year they're £3145. Who introduced them? Labour Who increased them? Labour Who plans to continue increasing them? Labour Perhaps I am missing the point, but Labour are currently limiting my access to uni. I have a job and I still can't afford to live comfortably at university without having to worry about money. By the end of this upcoming academic year I'll be in £15,000 debt. £15,000 debt that I wouldn't be in if the government didn't introduce fee's in order to give the impression that it was making studying easier. Why was it that introducing fee's was their solution to a class related problem? I can't see the sense in that at all. How can we get the working class kids into uni? I know, let's introduce fees. More students get to go to uni now but it hasn't really solved any problems whatsoever. |
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If University is going to be free then it should be free for all those that wish to go, in a similar way to high school. How this could work in practice I am not sure as I don't know how universities are currently funded. |
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For example a lorry driver fell asleep at the wheel, ran into another vehicle and killed someone. Should he be prosecuted? The initial reaction of most people would be "Of course he should!" - but he isn't going to be. The reason why is that he suffers from sleep apnoea and was unaware that he suffers from sleep apnoea. He may have 'dozed off' and woken up hundreds of times before and never even noticed. I know 2 people who do the same and they are totally unaware that they have ever been asleep. This case of the woman and her flat shouldn't be affected by the fact that the absentee tenant is a rapist; but it should, in my opinion, be affected by the fact that the power was off in the flat and food was rotting, plus the fact that she did all she could to make sure his belongings were safe. Her actions were done without malice and I feel it should be viewed differently than for instance if she'd just chucked all his stuff in a skip. |
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The tax player pays to educate everyone who goes to prison so why not everyone who wants to go to University? There will still be admissions criteria and money goes to University from all sorts of private funding. For example the City Solicitor's Education Trust gives funding to law departments all over the country, and I am sure there are many other funds for other subjects. Places would be more limited but the whole point of University is that the brightest and most able get the better qualifications. I'm sure I'm not the only person who read that the value of a degree has actually dropped recently due to the numbers of people now able to get degree's. It's nice that everyone can go to uni if they want to but what really is the point of it if there aren't enough graduate rate jobs to go around? It's just getting people into debt just to end up in jobs they could have gone to anyway. To the extent that McDonalds is in the 100 Top Gradute Recruiters guide and has been for years. So yes, I would close the doors to university a little if it meant it was cheaper and made my degree more worthwhile. |
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Just to add, at university I don't know who is from a family on a low income like mine or who is from a rich family. I just think everyone is after the same thing as me and that is a good education.
I find the class thing a bit of an excuse to complain about something. I couldn't care less what class people are from, it's never been a big issue in my house even though we have a very low income. I've never heard any of my family blame a politician for their lifestyle so I find it hard to associate lifestyle with anything other than own personal choice. |
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If a person can afford private education for their children, their income must be quite substantially higher than the 'ordinary' or average income. Surely the more you earn the more tax you end up paying? It's not just the working class person that pays tax is it!? You have completely just lost me. |
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In the olden days we used to have things called 'student grants' before we had student loans. Much better IMO as it didn't leave young people starting out life in debt.
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Sorry, can't remember the details without rummaging through a big file. Blazey: the fee amount you quote seems particularly high to me, does this not cover a loan towards living expenses, etc too ? |
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I do think that the actual tuition ought to be offered F.O.C., however, the loan should still stand for the living expenses. It does seem hard to pay off these huge amounts once you are earning over a certain amount I know, but not crippling instalments and is taken out at source before you get your pay packet, so you don't really notice it to a certain extent (if that makes sense). |
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I get a grant for living expenses so I haven't included that in my expenses.
In total I get 9k a year which also includes the loan for fees. Some in a grant so I deducted that from the amount I quoted. My amount is actually lower than some people's debt because obviously not everyone gets the full grant. Grants and bursaries still exist and I get both of those, which make life a little bit easier. I also have a part time job. I don't go out socialising very much but I do like to eat well and obviously money goes towards living costs and study materials. I don't have any savings. A lot of students from families that can afford fee's tend to still get out the loan and put the money into savings accounts because then they can make a small profit during their time at university. I don't begrudge anyone who has more money than me at university because I have too much to worry about in my own life without worrying about everyone elses. I give talks to young students about finance and living at university. If there was money available then I'd know about it because it's my job to make sure people know what thye're entitled to and the types of support that is available. I don't let the debt worry me unless, like the approaching term, I can't afford to get through it even on a strict budget. I'm applying for a second job though so I should be ok. |
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