Sent to Last Days by Hot Ranter Shawn:
Yesterday, my mother, along with thousands of other people, was falsely imprisoned by the Washington State Patrol. When WSP blocked I5, the main means of ingress and egress for thousands of people working in Seattle, it wrongly restricted their liberty to leave an area and get to their homes. WSP falsely imprisoned these people. It was not necessary to block I5, as the Department of Transportation had stated it did on its website. I5 was suitable for slow travel. While waiting for my mother for 12 hours to come home, I watched through the highways cameras dozens of cars, that managed to go past WSP roadblock, drive along I5 all the way to Tacoma. Furthermore, after getting behind the roadblock through residential streets, I myself drove on I5, at times going as fast as 50 miles per hour with the traffic’s flow. Not only did WSDOT failed to prepare the roads for safer travel during this winter storm, WSP falsely imprisoned thousands of people, and put them in danger of freezing.
Shawn and UI Matt (“what’s a four-letter word for ‘crusted-over-wound?'”) Luby need to pair up and file a class-action suit against the violent coercion of the state apparatus infringing on their freedom to DIE NEEDLESSLY.
Nothing quite like people trying to use legal terminology when they have no clue what they’re talking about.
See also: the entire Bill of Rights
You know, it really does get better . . . unless you’re this fuckface. It’s only going to get worse for him.
This person has not ability to walk? The only right you have regarding freedom of transit is to move under your own power. The use of motor vehicle to move your ass about town is entirely circumscribed by the rules, regulations and directvives of the relevant authorities.
Nuts, definitely.
Nick @ 2: Are you saying the founders who wrote the Bill of Right were trying to use legal terminology but really had no clue what they were talking about? That they should have hired a good team of lawyers to produce a Bill of Rights five pages long in 8-point type full of carefully constructed legalesse that precisely spells out the applicability of those rights in all possible circumstances, and specifies that any conflicts are to be resolved via binding arbitration in a jurisdiction of their choosing? (Sorry, just exploiting the ambiguity in your statement for my own amusement.)
You sir, are a moron. (Not you Nick. Shawn, the whiner.)
Are you a 1L still in your first semester? Public Necessity is an absolute privilege to False Imprisonment, and the authority to shut down highways during emergency situations is granted to the WSP by law. Nor is there any claim for wrongful arrest, as nobody was arrested.
You seem to be claiming negligence, in that the WSP was being “too careful” during a dangerous situation, and if so I encourage you to go and be laughed out of court in person.
I’m sorry your mother had a hard time making it home. Many people had a hard time making it home last night. Take a chill pill.
Car entitlement reaches new highs, obviously its a right to drive everywhere whenever you want as much as you want for no cost.
If closing a road that connects with another road that eventually passes your residence counts as imprisonment, then we’re all prisoners of the state every moment of our lives.
But your Teapublican blend of “the government isn’t doing enough” (“WSDOT failed to prepare the roads for safer travel”) with “the government is doing too much” (“It was not necessary to block I5”) is pitch-perfect. Do you think there will be enough gas left in the Tea Party balloon to allow you to run in 2012?
As I type this, I sit here on the 5th floor, falsely imprisoned by the express elevator. The building engineers made the decision that the express elevator only be accessible from floors much higher than mine, and therefore I await someone to brave one of the 6 regular elevators to my floor and free me from my office prison.
My rule is to work within 10 miles of where I live. It’s a decent bicycle ride. When the weather is less than hospitable, a ten mile walk isn’t unreasonable. I live in Capitol Hill, so all else is walkable. Really need to make these considerations ahead of time.
Why did WSDOT block the interstate in the first place? I’m still unclear and never have heard an explaination.
@4 False imprisonment claims have been won in just such cases; where the victim’s car was blocked in. Crazy, I know- they could indeed walk away at any time. Obviously, though, we’re stuck here with the WSP’s decision, based on public safety. No case for false imprisonment.
@11
Perhaps because it is dangerous to drive on icy freeways? Perhaps because people tend to drive too fast even when conditions are optimal?
Use your imagination, why don’t you?
@13…my imagination is just fine, thank you very much.
How about you use some critical thinking?
It doesn’t make sense to block the freeway when people are already on it to prevent people from driving on the freeway. If they simply wanted to prevent driving on the freeway, wouldn’t they block freeway entrances?
And, how about all the miles of freeway that weren’t blocked? Was the blocked area less safe for some reason? What would that reason be? I can imagine some possibilities but I’d like to know if there was some interesting factor I hadn’t considered.
I’m sorry but “it’s dangerous and you drive too fast” doesn’t seem to be the only answer. Use your imagination, why don’t you?
This is a somewhat far-fetched theory. Tort law vary by state, but here’s what the Restatement of Torts (Second) has to say about a claim for false imprisonment for blocking a public highway: “[O]ne who blocks off a highway, intending to prevent the public from passing along it, is not liable for false imprisonment to one whose privilege to use the highway has been thus denied. Indeed, the actor does not incur any liability by so doing, since the public is merely privileged to travel the public highways and has not a right to do so; that is, the interest of the members of the public in such travel is not protected by a right of action in them.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 36 (1965).
Moreover, the police and the Department of Transportation are government actors (probably) acting under the color of statutory authority.
This is what happens when Car entitlement meets Mommy issues.