5 ms·

>Mauro cited a 2000 San Francisco case, in which courts ruled a $663,000 fee for ongoing code violations was not constitutionally excessive, as precedent. The

>Mauro cited a 2000 San Francisco case, in which courts ruled a $663,000 fee for ongoing code violations was not constitutionally excessive, as precedent. The world has gone mad.

suyash 4y ago
truly, let people do what they want in thier property, specially when they are building, hacking and making things for better. This is the spirit we should uphold and celebrate not punish in this country.
- joyeuse6701 4y ago
  Working on a car on grass is an environmental issue. Oil and coolant are toxic. Owning property lets you do a lot of things, but not everything i.e. making such a mess or danger that you affect your neighbors, like never cleaning up dog shit causing a fly problem, or making a neighborhood unseemly by turning a house into a junkyard. I’m sympathetic to the man, that’s a massive fine, but it seems self inflicted when he could have obeyed the ruling, and sued the city at his leisure, avoiding the penalty costs.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    I wish the reporter had dug into a few more things: first, the impact on the neighbor. Did they just not like the look of it, or was there more? Second, what options he had to mitigate this. Was it the grass that was the problem, and could that have been mitigated by putting down some sort of fluid catching surface, could that have helped? My instinct is to support the old man who fixes things, but I'm cautious in coming to conclusions. He might have been doing real harm to his neighbor, or to the environment. He may have had reasonable outs and been stubborn and not taken them. We don't know enough, and I think that's a failure in journalism.
  - salawat 4y ago
    Property owner fences in backyard: Check Property Owner maintains vehicles: check Property owner owns propane and and gas powered generator for tools, keeps them within back yard: Check Californian having an aneurysm because someone uses their personal space in a way they don't like or understand: Check The absurdity is strong with this one. Oil is only an issue when changing or leaking, and even then only the once. If you've changing it, or have leaks, use a pan. If he's not doing that, charge him with that. It's not like simply having a car on the grass emits a wave of environmental destruction? Stop harassing the man. And if they're citing people for fruit on the grass, I want to see citations for leaves in autumn, yard furniture, hoses, sprinklers, bicycles, children's toys, planter boxes, and landscaping materials. Y'all would probably have a fit over composting.
  - illuminerdy 4y ago
    There's probably a middle ground where persons can be allowed to use their private property for businesses such as the one in this case, while still being subject to reasonable regulations that prevent environmental abuse and other such issues.
- jen729w 4y ago
  Aaaaahhhhh I’ll play a bit of the Devil’s advocate here and say: you don’t live next door. It might well be the case that living next door to this guy is hell on Earth. You shouldn’t just be allowed to do what you want just because you own a block of suburban land. We live in a society.
  - Clubber 4y ago
    I seriously doubt it. Working on cars isn't noisy. Had he been a chainsaw sculptor, maybe. My comment was on the amount they thought was ok to fine him and the fact a judge didn't find it excessive. I suspect it was more of a bureaucratic, "you will respect my authorit-a" type thing and the judge didn't keep them in check.
    - havelhovel 4y ago
      > Working on cars isn't noisy. That is not my experience at any mechanic's shop ever! And even without all the fancy tools, my neighbor was banging on their engine for hours just last weekend. Maybe they don't know what they're doing, and therefore it doesn't count as work, but it sure was loud.
    - cafard 4y ago
      It's not clear to me that he was working on cars. Thinking about working on cars, planning to work on cars, sure.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Playing devil’s advocate is fun, but you don’t know. And it’s hard to imagine how fixing a car could be hell on earth for the neighbors. Listen to how it sounds. It’s over half a million dollars for fixing a car, man (woman; I wish there was a gender neutral term that had the same flexibility, since “bud” just sounds aggressive).
    - Shog9 4y ago
      It's trivial to imagine, if you've ever worked on a car, had a "car guy" neighbor, lived near a service shop, etc. Many cars are neither quiet nor do they confine their emissions to property boundaries.
- kmbfjr 4y ago
  Let me know how you feel when your neighbor starts animal rendering and leather tanning at scale.
  - tacoluv 4y ago
    Making them homeless might be a bit of an overkill for that transgression, no?
goldcd 4y ago
My guess is that this is (as mentioned here in the article) the problem with (somewhat more) reasonable fines per day, snowballing. If it's not criminal, and all you can do is fine, and no action is taken to prevent the the fine incurring - I'm not really sure what option there is. Do you cap it? Send in the bailiff's to remove the offending thing at a certain point? Just write it all off, setting a precendent? I've genuinely no idea.
- Clubber 4y ago
  Yes, there should certainly be a cap. $573,000 sounds like it would be from an unreasonable government at best, authoritarian government at worst with no common sense.
  - goldcd 4y ago
    But the problem with caps, is that people hit them. As a hypothetical, imagine a polluting plant poisoning the neighbourhood. You want them to know once their fine gets to $1M it's capped? You've suddenly presented a clear choice to the plant - fix it if it'll cost less than $1M, if it'll cost more keep ignore. If you're going to fine anybody "per unit of time", you have to keep it open-ended (as otherwise the only people who'll ignore you, are those making more profit per day, than the per day cost)
    - Clubber 4y ago
      It's not an all or nothing thing. You can cap some fines and not others obviously. Fining someone $573,000 for having vehicles in his back yard and working on them is ludicrous and absolutely makes the government look like either a bully, out of touch with reality, incompetent, or all of the above.

>Mauro cited a 2000 San Francisco case, in which courts ruled a $663,000 fee for ongoing code violations was not constitutionally excessive, as precedent. The world has gone mad.

suyash 4y ago

truly, let people do what they want in thier property, specially when they are building, hacking and making things for better. This is the spirit we should uphold and celebrate not punish in this country.

joyeuse6701 4y ago
Working on a car on grass is an environmental issue. Oil and coolant are toxic. Owning property lets you do a lot of things, but not everything i.e. making such a mess or danger that you affect your neighbors, like never cleaning up dog shit causing a fly problem, or making a neighborhood unseemly by turning a house into a junkyard. I’m sympathetic to the man, that’s a massive fine, but it seems self inflicted when he could have obeyed the ruling, and sued the city at his leisure, avoiding the penalty costs.
- javajosh 4y ago
  I wish the reporter had dug into a few more things: first, the impact on the neighbor. Did they just not like the look of it, or was there more? Second, what options he had to mitigate this. Was it the grass that was the problem, and could that have been mitigated by putting down some sort of fluid catching surface, could that have helped? My instinct is to support the old man who fixes things, but I'm cautious in coming to conclusions. He might have been doing real harm to his neighbor, or to the environment. He may have had reasonable outs and been stubborn and not taken them. We don't know enough, and I think that's a failure in journalism.
- salawat 4y ago
  Property owner fences in backyard: Check Property Owner maintains vehicles: check Property owner owns propane and and gas powered generator for tools, keeps them within back yard: Check Californian having an aneurysm because someone uses their personal space in a way they don't like or understand: Check The absurdity is strong with this one. Oil is only an issue when changing or leaking, and even then only the once. If you've changing it, or have leaks, use a pan. If he's not doing that, charge him with that. It's not like simply having a car on the grass emits a wave of environmental destruction? Stop harassing the man. And if they're citing people for fruit on the grass, I want to see citations for leaves in autumn, yard furniture, hoses, sprinklers, bicycles, children's toys, planter boxes, and landscaping materials. Y'all would probably have a fit over composting.
- illuminerdy 4y ago
  There's probably a middle ground where persons can be allowed to use their private property for businesses such as the one in this case, while still being subject to reasonable regulations that prevent environmental abuse and other such issues.
jen729w 4y ago
Aaaaahhhhh I’ll play a bit of the Devil’s advocate here and say: you don’t live next door. It might well be the case that living next door to this guy is hell on Earth. You shouldn’t just be allowed to do what you want just because you own a block of suburban land. We live in a society.
- Clubber 4y ago
  I seriously doubt it. Working on cars isn't noisy. Had he been a chainsaw sculptor, maybe. My comment was on the amount they thought was ok to fine him and the fact a judge didn't find it excessive. I suspect it was more of a bureaucratic, "you will respect my authorit-a" type thing and the judge didn't keep them in check.
  - havelhovel 4y ago
    > Working on cars isn't noisy. That is not my experience at any mechanic's shop ever! And even without all the fancy tools, my neighbor was banging on their engine for hours just last weekend. Maybe they don't know what they're doing, and therefore it doesn't count as work, but it sure was loud.
  - cafard 4y ago
    It's not clear to me that he was working on cars. Thinking about working on cars, planning to work on cars, sure.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  Playing devil’s advocate is fun, but you don’t know. And it’s hard to imagine how fixing a car could be hell on earth for the neighbors. Listen to how it sounds. It’s over half a million dollars for fixing a car, man (woman; I wish there was a gender neutral term that had the same flexibility, since “bud” just sounds aggressive).
  - Shog9 4y ago
    It's trivial to imagine, if you've ever worked on a car, had a "car guy" neighbor, lived near a service shop, etc. Many cars are neither quiet nor do they confine their emissions to property boundaries.
kmbfjr 4y ago
Let me know how you feel when your neighbor starts animal rendering and leather tanning at scale.
- tacoluv 4y ago
  Making them homeless might be a bit of an overkill for that transgression, no?

goldcd 4y ago

My guess is that this is (as mentioned here in the article) the problem with (somewhat more) reasonable fines per day, snowballing. If it's not criminal, and all you can do is fine, and no action is taken to prevent the the fine incurring - I'm not really sure what option there is. Do you cap it? Send in the bailiff's to remove the offending thing at a certain point? Just write it all off, setting a precendent? I've genuinely no idea.

Clubber 4y ago
Yes, there should certainly be a cap. $573,000 sounds like it would be from an unreasonable government at best, authoritarian government at worst with no common sense.
- goldcd 4y ago
  But the problem with caps, is that people hit them. As a hypothetical, imagine a polluting plant poisoning the neighbourhood. You want them to know once their fine gets to $1M it's capped? You've suddenly presented a clear choice to the plant - fix it if it'll cost less than $1M, if it'll cost more keep ignore. If you're going to fine anybody "per unit of time", you have to keep it open-ended (as otherwise the only people who'll ignore you, are those making more profit per day, than the per day cost)
  - Clubber 4y ago
    It's not an all or nothing thing. You can cap some fines and not others obviously. Fining someone $573,000 for having vehicles in his back yard and working on them is ludicrous and absolutely makes the government look like either a bully, out of touch with reality, incompetent, or all of the above.