5 ms·

And I thought it was outrageous that no way for me to stop this trash advertising newspaper van from dumping their paper on my driveway twice a week every week

And I thought it was outrageous that no way for me to stop this trash advertising newspaper van from dumping their paper on my driveway twice a week every week for the last 15 years. There is essentially one out there, all water logged usually, at all times. I pick them up and throw them away, and the next day it's back. Years ago a few times I waited and watched and confronted the guy when he actually showed up, I almost got beat up! Mexican couple and the guys wife had to hold him back from getting them I into trouble). I tried calling an office number found on the paper itself several times. I did get a person, who said "ok", which resulted in nothing. They even asked if I rent and tried to say that if I rent, then I don't own the property, and so can't make the demand. It's a small thing but it's ultimately somehow just ridiculous that there is no way to stop someone from dumping some trash on my property, short of moving to a gated community which is nine thousand times worse than this "trash tattoo". It just boggles my mind that even if you decided to expend the effort, it turns out there is nothing you can do. Sue the paper company? For what damages? What court would waste 8 minutes on something like that? Anyway my point was "and I though that was outrageous"

93po 3y ago
I mean theoretically this is littering, and theoretically police should stop people from littering. But I agree this would basically never happen.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I mean theoretically this is littering, and theoretically police should stop people from littering. The police (and public prosecutors) have no duty to stop anything, and are in theory free to prioritize their efforts against illegal activity anyway they want so long as they don’t violate, e.g., anti-discrimination law in how they do. And, in practice, they are free to prioritize even more freely than that. Of course, leaving unwanted material on someone else’s property is also the tort of trespass to land, so if you can identify the tortfeasor you can act directly against them rather than trying to convince public authorities to prioritize prosecution of the offense.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    Right. The job the police is actually not to help you or defend you or protect you or to recover your stolen stuff or anything like that. Their job is to maintain order and protect all of society. They track down the guy that robbed you because society doesn't want robbers on the loose, not for you because you were injured.
    - 93po 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - 93po 3y ago
    [flagged]
ragestorm 3y ago
Typically renting has no bearing on refusing mail delivered. It's your current domicile. If they are coming into your property to deliver the mail, you could post no trespassing and call the cops on them. Courts spend time on all manner of things, so in fact they would spend 8 minutes on it.
- Lio 3y ago
  Not sure what the Canadian trespass laws are but would that work? In the UK you’d have to ask a trespasser to leave first as it’s a civil matter. If they don’t leave immediately or they threaten you then it’s criminal and you can call the cops. So if you don’t catch them trespassing you can’t really do anything about it later. Does Canada treat trespass a crime? Here, if damage is done during trespass that’s also different. Which is why I think I’d go the small claims court route for the cost of clean up and time spent dealing with it.
mcv 3y ago
In Netherland mailboxes often have a no/no or yes/no sticker to indicate whether they want to receive free newspapers and junk mail. Deliverers tend to be reasonably good (though not perfect) at obeying these.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  In the USA it's illegal for anyone other than the Postal Service to place anything in your mailbox. Technically, they own your mailbox, even though you have to provide it at your expense. That's why they are dumping the advertising on his driveway, and why newspapers often provided a separate box for your newspaper that you mount below or beside your mailbox. I used past tense because we have no local newspaper anymore. If they put this crap in your mailbox, they'd be committing a federal crime and postal inspectors would probably track them down if they got enough complaints.
  - blibble 3y ago
    > In the USA it's illegal for anyone other than the Postal Service to place anything in your mailbox. how does this work with outgoing mail?
    - snypher 3y ago
      The law reads something like >statute that prohibited the deposit of unstamped “mailable matter” in a mailbox I assume the outgoing mail, if stamped, is ok. Edit; UPS may even be able to use it if the item has postage paid, but in that case they would just have USPS deliver it.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > how does this work with outgoing mail? A more complete (but still not fully so) statement is that it is generally illegal for anyone but you and the postal service to put anything into your mailbox, and it is also generally illegal for anyone but you and the postal service to take anything out.
      - 3y ago
TheRealSteel 3y ago
Hose him down next time he comes.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Yes, the right move is definitely to assault a person who's doing the job he was hired to do.
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    Just following orders, eh?
    - pavel_lishin 3y ago
      Are you seriously comparing someone delivering newspapers to being a part of the Wehrmacht during the Nazi regime?
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        It starts small. It always starts small. Suggest reading some Arendt. Besides, littering isn't necessarily small potatoes around here. There are signs at the roadside that warn of potential fines exceeding $6000.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        Is he littering on the public roadway where those fines apply? Because if he is, you probably don’t have any defensible private interest at all. If he isn’t, the sign is irrelevant.
        CamperBob2 3y ago
        Hard to say, that'd be something to ask a local attorney. Which you can bet I'd do, if people were illegally dumping trash on my property.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
I had a similar problem. I opened the paper, found the small print with a phone number I could call to cancel the "subscription", and after a few weeks, the physical spam stopped showing up. Talking to the person delivering the paper will likely result in nothing; they don't own the business, and are likely contracted to deliver the stuff. You don't pay them, so they have no incentive to listen to you. (Although the violence is weird and unexpected. What did you say to them?
- avar 3y ago
  (I delivered untargeted physical spam in my early teens, a TV guide) Why you think the person who's delivering doesn't have an incentive to listen? They're paid to deliver to N addresses, if they know that X, Y, Z addresses don't want the delivery they're still getting paid for N deliveries. When I did this job looooong ago I'd get a stack of papers, along with a strike-though list of addresses that shouldn't be delivered to, as those people had contacted the publisher. But over the course of doing this job for a summer or two I'd also have people instead ask me to stop delivering in person, which I could use to overlay my own strike-though list at the beginning. Those were much better, as unlike the first list they didn't subtract from the N, free money! Clearly that didn't work for the GP for whatever reason, but I think it should in general. Then again this was a different time, and not even the same continent, YMMV.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    They aren't told to deliver to any specific addresses. This is 100% why they can't actually comply with a request not to deliver. The guy in the truck doesn't have some list of addresses and has no time or capacity to be consulting any such list even if he had one. He has a route and the route is whole streets, and probably has to cover many whole streets every day, and probably gets paid almost nothing for it, and so probably goes to some other job after that every day. Some individual exceptions like remember this house and that house is probably utterly impossible. Their unworkable business model shouldn't be my problem so I'm not excusing them, just saying what the realities probably are.
balls187 3y ago
I am not a lawyer, but there are two things here: 1) if they're entering your property without your permission, that is trespassing. If they've been doing it for ~15 years, you probably have a good case for reasonable damages worth more than 8 minutes of a courts time. You can start collecting evidence, sending a certified letter to the business requesting they stop delivery, and bring a lawsuit against the company. The courts are obligated to follow the law, and if your jurisdiction is like mine (WA State), you can sue for reasonable costs--investigation, 15-years worth of trash delivery (what is that like 10 garbing bins worth?) attorney fees, and ask for punitive damages (15 years of this behavior is clearly a nuisance, and you will likely find a sympathetic judge/magistrate). Of course, just because you get a judgement in your favor does not mean you will easily be able to collect. So that leads me to 2) They are also illegally littering on your property, which is a crime, and of which you can involve the police. As others have noted, this is a low priority offense to the police, but you can collect evidence (video recording of them doing it), and a certified letters requesting they stop. Armed with that evidence, you should be able to request the police to come and fine the driver for doing so. The police won't respond right away, but with enough persistence on your part they will. Depending on your jurisdiction, you could also elicit the help of your local city/county councilperson to get the police to take action sooner.
- hg35h4 3y ago
  Accessing the walkway to the front door and knocking on the front door is not trespassing, even if there is signs posted. Wandering off the path, going around the back, looking in windows is trespassing - but accessing the front door to deliver, ask for directions, or invite someone to tea is not. You can be asked to leave which then could be turned into trespassing. Decent write up about it - https://www.radford.edu/content/cj-bulletin/home/june--2017--vol-2--no--2-/do-_no-trespassing-signs-rescind-the-invitation-to-the-public-to.html https://www.radford.edu/content/cj-bulletin/home/june--2017-...
  - balls187 3y ago
    We're not talking about knocking on doors. We're talking about entering their property and repeatedly leaving trash.
ke88y 3y ago
> Sue the paper company? Yes. > For what damages? Your time. It has value. > What court would waste 8 minutes on something like that? Small claims. This sort of thing is what it's there for. Don't get me wrong: the judge will be annoyed at the pettiness. BUT. As long as the judge sees that you went way above and beyond in trying to resolve the issue out of court, and you ask for reasonable damages, they will be pissed about the pettiness but the wrath will be applied to the other party. For me: 1. I spent literally years trying to resolve the issue. Dozens of letters, phone calls, etc. 2. I asked for "2.49 times (my hourly rate times the number of hours I spent dealing with the issue)" because the statutory damage multiple was lower-bounded by 2 and upper-bounded by 3). I only billed for hours during the 9-5 work day when I was consulting, and only time during the work day when I was taking vacation time from a W2 job. 3. I included some of the time I spent on contacting them and writing letters, but not all of it. I told the judge that the sum included only time spent after my third letter, when it became clear that taking them to court might be the only possible resolution. 4. I apologized on behalf of both parties that something so silly couldn't be resolved out of court, and stressed that I tried really hard for years to work with the business owner. In your case, asking for $1k or so would probably be fairly reasonable after a year or two of trying to resolve the issue, especially given the confrontation with the driver and the smoke-up-your-ass about renting. Judges really do not want you to waste their time. The key is to demonstrate that you are also exasperated by the fact that the court was the only way to resolve your disagreement.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  thank you, food for thought
- NegativeK 3y ago
  > Judges really do not want you to waste their time. That's kind of funny, given that it's small claims court. I mean, I understand that it's a fee for littering, and not causing physical harm -- but... What else are you supposed to do if someone is habitually littering?
- ornornor 3y ago
  I don’t know if I’d want to anger an angry thug, who knows where I live, and who already almost beat me up when I waited for him the last time around.
batch12 3y ago
Those kinds of things tickle the crazy part of my brain. This would make me want to save up a year's worth of papers (maybe collect them from my neighbors who want to participate) and quietly return them to the door or lobby of the business in question. Bonus if they've been sitting outside the entire time.
plagiarist 3y ago
Reminds me of own struggles a while back with people upstairs actually slamming doors and drawers around at 3 AM, sometimes as late as 5 AM. How is there nothing that can legally be done to stop something like that? It's insane.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Sounds like the sort of noise complaint that you can talk to the neighbor, the landlord, or the condo association but legal avenues are probably going to get you laughed at.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    Yes, I contacted all of them, only the landlord bothered to do anything. If the noisemakers had been the owners I would have had no recourse other than to move. That's ridiculous.
barbazoo 3y ago
> Years ago a few times I waited and watched and confronted the guy when he actually showed up, I almost got beat up! Mexican couple and the guys wife had to hold him back from getting them I into trouble) Just out of curiosity, how did you know they were Mexican and how is it relevant?
jiveturkey 3y ago
Same here, once a week. Well I've never caught the driver in action, not that it would matter anyway. For me this is a local paper printed and distributed by the San Jose Mercury News. Yes that Mercury News. Phone calls always get a full voicemail box, and emails are of course unanswered! I just realized, I will need to call their advertising line to get this stopped.

93po 3y ago

I mean theoretically this is littering, and theoretically police should stop people from littering. But I agree this would basically never happen.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> I mean theoretically this is littering, and theoretically police should stop people from littering. The police (and public prosecutors) have no duty to stop anything, and are in theory free to prioritize their efforts against illegal activity anyway they want so long as they don’t violate, e.g., anti-discrimination law in how they do. And, in practice, they are free to prioritize even more freely than that. Of course, leaving unwanted material on someone else’s property is also the tort of trespass to land, so if you can identify the tortfeasor you can act directly against them rather than trying to convince public authorities to prioritize prosecution of the offense.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Right. The job the police is actually not to help you or defend you or protect you or to recover your stolen stuff or anything like that. Their job is to maintain order and protect all of society. They track down the guy that robbed you because society doesn't want robbers on the loose, not for you because you were injured.
  - 93po 3y ago
    [flagged]
- 93po 3y ago
  [flagged]

ragestorm 3y ago

Typically renting has no bearing on refusing mail delivered. It's your current domicile. If they are coming into your property to deliver the mail, you could post no trespassing and call the cops on them. Courts spend time on all manner of things, so in fact they would spend 8 minutes on it.

Lio 3y ago
Not sure what the Canadian trespass laws are but would that work? In the UK you’d have to ask a trespasser to leave first as it’s a civil matter. If they don’t leave immediately or they threaten you then it’s criminal and you can call the cops. So if you don’t catch them trespassing you can’t really do anything about it later. Does Canada treat trespass a crime? Here, if damage is done during trespass that’s also different. Which is why I think I’d go the small claims court route for the cost of clean up and time spent dealing with it.

mcv 3y ago

In Netherland mailboxes often have a no/no or yes/no sticker to indicate whether they want to receive free newspapers and junk mail. Deliverers tend to be reasonably good (though not perfect) at obeying these.

SoftTalker 3y ago
In the USA it's illegal for anyone other than the Postal Service to place anything in your mailbox. Technically, they own your mailbox, even though you have to provide it at your expense. That's why they are dumping the advertising on his driveway, and why newspapers often provided a separate box for your newspaper that you mount below or beside your mailbox. I used past tense because we have no local newspaper anymore. If they put this crap in your mailbox, they'd be committing a federal crime and postal inspectors would probably track them down if they got enough complaints.
- blibble 3y ago
  > In the USA it's illegal for anyone other than the Postal Service to place anything in your mailbox. how does this work with outgoing mail?
  - snypher 3y ago
    The law reads something like >statute that prohibited the deposit of unstamped “mailable matter” in a mailbox I assume the outgoing mail, if stamped, is ok. Edit; UPS may even be able to use it if the item has postage paid, but in that case they would just have USPS deliver it.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > how does this work with outgoing mail? A more complete (but still not fully so) statement is that it is generally illegal for anyone but you and the postal service to put anything into your mailbox, and it is also generally illegal for anyone but you and the postal service to take anything out.
    - 3y ago

TheRealSteel 3y ago

Hose him down next time he comes.

pavel_lishin 3y ago
Yes, the right move is definitely to assault a person who's doing the job he was hired to do.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  Just following orders, eh?
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    Are you seriously comparing someone delivering newspapers to being a part of the Wehrmacht during the Nazi regime?
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      It starts small. It always starts small. Suggest reading some Arendt. Besides, littering isn't necessarily small potatoes around here. There are signs at the roadside that warn of potential fines exceeding $6000.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        Is he littering on the public roadway where those fines apply? Because if he is, you probably don’t have any defensible private interest at all. If he isn’t, the sign is irrelevant.
        CamperBob2 3y ago
        Hard to say, that'd be something to ask a local attorney. Which you can bet I'd do, if people were illegally dumping trash on my property.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

I had a similar problem. I opened the paper, found the small print with a phone number I could call to cancel the "subscription", and after a few weeks, the physical spam stopped showing up. Talking to the person delivering the paper will likely result in nothing; they don't own the business, and are likely contracted to deliver the stuff. You don't pay them, so they have no incentive to listen to you. (Although the violence is weird and unexpected. What did you say to them?

avar 3y ago
(I delivered untargeted physical spam in my early teens, a TV guide) Why you think the person who's delivering doesn't have an incentive to listen? They're paid to deliver to N addresses, if they know that X, Y, Z addresses don't want the delivery they're still getting paid for N deliveries. When I did this job looooong ago I'd get a stack of papers, along with a strike-though list of addresses that shouldn't be delivered to, as those people had contacted the publisher. But over the course of doing this job for a summer or two I'd also have people instead ask me to stop delivering in person, which I could use to overlay my own strike-though list at the beginning. Those were much better, as unlike the first list they didn't subtract from the N, free money! Clearly that didn't work for the GP for whatever reason, but I think it should in general. Then again this was a different time, and not even the same continent, YMMV.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  They aren't told to deliver to any specific addresses. This is 100% why they can't actually comply with a request not to deliver. The guy in the truck doesn't have some list of addresses and has no time or capacity to be consulting any such list even if he had one. He has a route and the route is whole streets, and probably has to cover many whole streets every day, and probably gets paid almost nothing for it, and so probably goes to some other job after that every day. Some individual exceptions like remember this house and that house is probably utterly impossible. Their unworkable business model shouldn't be my problem so I'm not excusing them, just saying what the realities probably are.

balls187 3y ago

I am not a lawyer, but there are two things here: 1) if they're entering your property without your permission, that is trespassing. If they've been doing it for ~15 years, you probably have a good case for reasonable damages worth more than 8 minutes of a courts time. You can start collecting evidence, sending a certified letter to the business requesting they stop delivery, and bring a lawsuit against the company. The courts are obligated to follow the law, and if your jurisdiction is like mine (WA State), you can sue for reasonable costs--investigation, 15-years worth of trash delivery (what is that like 10 garbing bins worth?) attorney fees, and ask for punitive damages (15 years of this behavior is clearly a nuisance, and you will likely find a sympathetic judge/magistrate). Of course, just because you get a judgement in your favor does not mean you will easily be able to collect. So that leads me to 2) They are also illegally littering on your property, which is a crime, and of which you can involve the police. As others have noted, this is a low priority offense to the police, but you can collect evidence (video recording of them doing it), and a certified letters requesting they stop. Armed with that evidence, you should be able to request the police to come and fine the driver for doing so. The police won't respond right away, but with enough persistence on your part they will. Depending on your jurisdiction, you could also elicit the help of your local city/county councilperson to get the police to take action sooner.

hg35h4 3y ago
Accessing the walkway to the front door and knocking on the front door is not trespassing, even if there is signs posted. Wandering off the path, going around the back, looking in windows is trespassing - but accessing the front door to deliver, ask for directions, or invite someone to tea is not. You can be asked to leave which then could be turned into trespassing. Decent write up about it - https://www.radford.edu/content/cj-bulletin/home/june--2017--vol-2--no--2-/do-_no-trespassing-signs-rescind-the-invitation-to-the-public-to.html https://www.radford.edu/content/cj-bulletin/home/june--2017-...
- balls187 3y ago
  We're not talking about knocking on doors. We're talking about entering their property and repeatedly leaving trash.

ke88y 3y ago

> Sue the paper company? Yes. > For what damages? Your time. It has value. > What court would waste 8 minutes on something like that? Small claims. This sort of thing is what it's there for. Don't get me wrong: the judge will be annoyed at the pettiness. BUT. As long as the judge sees that you went way above and beyond in trying to resolve the issue out of court, and you ask for reasonable damages, they will be pissed about the pettiness but the wrath will be applied to the other party. For me: 1. I spent literally years trying to resolve the issue. Dozens of letters, phone calls, etc. 2. I asked for "2.49 times (my hourly rate times the number of hours I spent dealing with the issue)" because the statutory damage multiple was lower-bounded by 2 and upper-bounded by 3). I only billed for hours during the 9-5 work day when I was consulting, and only time during the work day when I was taking vacation time from a W2 job. 3. I included some of the time I spent on contacting them and writing letters, but not all of it. I told the judge that the sum included only time spent after my third letter, when it became clear that taking them to court might be the only possible resolution. 4. I apologized on behalf of both parties that something so silly couldn't be resolved out of court, and stressed that I tried really hard for years to work with the business owner. In your case, asking for $1k or so would probably be fairly reasonable after a year or two of trying to resolve the issue, especially given the confrontation with the driver and the smoke-up-your-ass about renting. Judges really do not want you to waste their time. The key is to demonstrate that you are also exasperated by the fact that the court was the only way to resolve your disagreement.

Brian_K_White 3y ago
thank you, food for thought
NegativeK 3y ago
> Judges really do not want you to waste their time. That's kind of funny, given that it's small claims court. I mean, I understand that it's a fee for littering, and not causing physical harm -- but... What else are you supposed to do if someone is habitually littering?
ornornor 3y ago
I don’t know if I’d want to anger an angry thug, who knows where I live, and who already almost beat me up when I waited for him the last time around.

batch12 3y ago

Those kinds of things tickle the crazy part of my brain. This would make me want to save up a year's worth of papers (maybe collect them from my neighbors who want to participate) and quietly return them to the door or lobby of the business in question. Bonus if they've been sitting outside the entire time.

plagiarist 3y ago

Reminds me of own struggles a while back with people upstairs actually slamming doors and drawers around at 3 AM, sometimes as late as 5 AM. How is there nothing that can legally be done to stop something like that? It's insane.

ghaff 3y ago
Sounds like the sort of noise complaint that you can talk to the neighbor, the landlord, or the condo association but legal avenues are probably going to get you laughed at.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Yes, I contacted all of them, only the landlord bothered to do anything. If the noisemakers had been the owners I would have had no recourse other than to move. That's ridiculous.

barbazoo 3y ago

> Years ago a few times I waited and watched and confronted the guy when he actually showed up, I almost got beat up! Mexican couple and the guys wife had to hold him back from getting them I into trouble) Just out of curiosity, how did you know they were Mexican and how is it relevant?

jiveturkey 3y ago

Same here, once a week. Well I've never caught the driver in action, not that it would matter anyway. For me this is a local paper printed and distributed by the San Jose Mercury News. Yes that Mercury News. Phone calls always get a full voicemail box, and emails are of course unanswered! I just realized, I will need to call their advertising line to get this stopped.