Reply #343: Whoa, Nelly! [View All]

[missingthebigdog]

You said: And while this commentary is quite entertaining, it doesn't address the issue of lawyers suing law-abiding property owners because someone who enters their property illegally happens to be injured.

This case isn't about some illegals falling in a well on the property, or cutting themselves on barbed wire. This is about a group of vigilante morons taking the law into their own hands and assaulting people who were, at most, trespassing. This ranch owner pistol whipped the immigrant. Criminal charges were brought, and a Texas jury didn't find him guilty of the assault, but did convict him for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The immigrant sought redress in a civil court, where the standard of proof is lower, and prevailed. The identical thing happened in the OJ case. . . . The court didn't award this litigant the ranch; the ranch was handed over to satisfy the judgment. Would you be more comfortable if the ranch had been sold to an American, and the proceeds handed over to the victim to satisfy the judgment? Or do you think that the victim's illegal status is sufficient to deny him redress in our civil courts?

Think about this for just a moment. Do we really want to deny this victim access to the civil court system because of his non-citizenship status? Taking that position, no foreign national would ever contract with an American company- the contracts would be unenforceable.

Our system is not perfect, but it does a better than fair job of keeping a very small segment of the population from being in total control of the rest of us. We need to think long and hard before we undermine that.