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I'm sure most people remember the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. Back in 1994, a woman named Stella Liebeck, sued McDonald's because she spilled her coffee and burned herself. As a result, besides monetary compensation, McDonald's had to clearly mark that their coffee was hot and the temperature at which coffee should be served was debated by many. Is it just me or is coffee supposed to be hot? It seems like people are finding just about anything to sue over these days. I'm sure if she spilled her coffee and didn't burn herself she probably would have sued because her coffee wasn't warm enough.
Thinking about stupid lawsuits that have been filed got me thinking about stupid laws that get passed. I listen to SiriusXm radio while I am at work and hear a ton of crazy news stories. A few caught my attention lately, because they were stupid laws or laws that are going to bring the crazy out in people.
There is now such a thing as "textual harassment," and you can be criminally charged for it. Textual harassment is repeatedly texting a person to a point of harassment. To me this is not well defined at all. There are a variety of news stories on textual harassment, but all of them are so different. One person gets 758 text messages from an angry boyfriend; another used insulting language in a text. I'm sure most people have said rude or insulting things via text message before, so now that this crime exists you can almost turn in whoever you want.
However, the news stories miss one important aspect, the other person's messages. I'm sure if they checked the other person's messages they either wouldn't find anything because they had been deleted or they would find something that could also be considered harassment at some point in time. I get that some people are crazy controlling and insist on knowing exactly what the other person is doing and won't stop texting until they know, or are extremely rude, but I think this law is going to be used inappropriately by a lot of people.
I can see a lot of people getting upset over an insult and turning the person in for harassment, when it should really be used for people who are being seriously harassed or controlled. If somebody is being harassed in this way, then they are more than likely also being controlled beyond text messaging. However, I can already picture how many future crazy news stories this will bring up.
On a less serious level, another law that has recently passed is a ban on swearing in public. Middleborough, Massachusetts now has a $20 fine for swearing in public. The town decided to make this move because store owners didn't like teens on the streets yelling profanities back and forth to each other or having them sitting on benches outside their shops and using foul language. The town has had a bylaw similar to this for a long time, but has never enforced it.
I couldn't believe it when I heard about this law. A ban on swearing in public? Really? You may as well ban burping or laughing in public. You can't control what people say. Ever heard of First Amendment rights? I don't like people swearing in public either because I think it's rude when people swear around other people's children and things like that, but how are you going to stop teenagers from swearing in public? They're just going to rebel or come up with words that sound almost the same as the profanity. It's not like they are in school, they are in public.
I just think law enforcement should spend their time on more important things than writing-up swearing tickets. There are plenty of criminals getting away with crap and plenty of people committing crimes on the internet, so how about they focus on those people, instead of "crude words."