Trespassing at site of old Tiger Stadium

[manualshift]

@manualshift: you are referring to the Governmental Tort Liability Act. The concept of governmental immunity comes from English law and did not require any statute. The Michigan Act, which put that in writing, actually defines exceptions to governmental immunity, one of which is exercise of a "proprietary" function. A "proprietary" function is "as any activity conducted primarily for pecuniary profit, excluding activities normally supported by taxes or fees." The Act also makes dangerous conditions in buildings an exception to immunity. So it is not at all a stretch that an accident on that site could precipitate a lawsuit. Whether it would succeed is another matter, but no one wants the city law department spending time or money defending even frivolous lawsuits.

A vacant lot is a proprietary function? This is beyond grasping at straws.

[Huggybear]

Whether you think it is grasping at straws based on your own intuition has nothing to do with whether some creative lawyer brings a lawsuit based on that theory. The risk of being sued [[perhaps even remote) drives risk management measures.

A vacant lot is a proprietary function? This is beyond grasping at straws.

[manualshift]

Whether you think it is grasping at straws based on your own intuition has nothing to do with whether some creative lawyer brings a lawsuit based on that theory. The risk of being sued [[perhaps even remote) drives risk management measures.

Well, it is a creative theory of liability under Governmental Tort Immunity Act, which is exactly what I asked for.

If the City of Detroit is making Risk Management decisions to deter situations that could lead to frivolous claims then we are in real trouble.

Often even meritorious claims don't get filed because pursuing a lawsuit to completion involves an investment in time and money that has to be weighed against the probability of successful recovery.

The goal of Risk Management is to settle or defend both colorable and meritorious claims. In addition to the development of policies and practices to reduce incidents that lead to claims. Allocating resources to prevent the filing of frivolous claims is a waste as the risk of frivolous claims being filed can't be reduced [[beyond refusing to settle these claims).

The city has real liability issues to be concerned with such as the deterioration of its roadways and the provision of safe conditions for motorists, motorcyclists, and bicyclists. And a whole host of other issues.

Of course the city has an absolute right to close in the property and keep people off. I think this is a waste of resources if the potential liability or risk management is the justification for acting to establish this as a no trespassing area.

Possibly, the real reason to establish this is as a no trespassing area is to prevent the reestablishment of regular baseball play on the site. As people have brought up there is no development plan yet for this site http://www.degc.org/data/AddendumtoF...RFP7272010.pdf. There may or may not be a commitment to preserving the field. People gathering regularly to use the field as has been used for over 100 years could be the catalyst to reinvigorate members of the community who wish to see baseball preserved on the site.

[marcwigle]

I just want to play baseball at Tiger Stadium... or what's left of it.

[MCP-001]

@MCP.001: where to even start here? I missed the link - and when you called it my attention, it brought up a PDF that [[a) was written by something that politely could the Montana Mountainmen Law Review [[read its mission statement);* [[2) asserts the right to 'jury nullification,' based on constitutional provisions that Michigan lacks; and [[3) advocates something that the Michigan Court of Appeals has held is not a defendant's right and that the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has laughed off. But even if juror nullification were the law, you're not a juror when you simply walk onto a property, you're not even at the stage of being this kind of "arbiter." You would actually be the one who has to convince 6-12 other people to nullify the law. I'd think twice before doing that. In all of this discussion of citizen-level decisions, I would have expected to see a link to something on Thoreau, Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, or King - though the concept of civil disobedience usually calls for some higher human cause than the desire to occupy land once used to play a sport.

*There is some academic discussion on the subject [[well, there was in the mid-to-late 1990s), but it is not coming from these crackpots, who are the same people that would tell you that paying your federal income taxes is unconstitutional or that the bank can't collect on your credit cards due to violation of some obscure 18th century banking act.

If you want to base your argument on the source of the information, instead of the information contained within it, I expected better of you.

Jury nullification has had a long history in America.

It's been supported by founders like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson [[which says a lot since they had different views on how government should operate) and John Jay, first justice of the Supreme Court..

It was used by people opposed to slavery to find people innocent of the Fugitive Slave Act.

It was used by people opposed to Prohibition to release people convicted of violating the Volstead Act.

It was used by people to release Jack Kevorkian during one of his trials back in '94.

The last time that I checked, Michigan falls into those last three.

Judges are loathe to admit to juries today that they still have this authority, because it ultimately negates their power.

Speaking for myself, I find the whole civil disobedience thing [[getting arrested, going to jail and then court), counterproductive and a distraction to my personal life. I DO have other responsibilities and things that I like to do.

But if I were on that other side of the banister, how difficult do you really think it would be for me to convince those jurors that they had the power to overturn an unjust law in Detroit?

[jerrytimes]

Since the city owns the land and the land is just now a field of grass, doesn't that make it public property? Come on DETROIT!

[Huggybear]

The source was not the only problem, as I pointed out.

If you want to appeal to history, has been posited that jury nullification through hung juries was also used in Mississippi to acquit Byron de la Beckwith of killing Medgar Evars [[why was this left off your list?).

There are tons of brilliant people in jail who thought they had winning arguments. I think you'd actually find it pretty difficult to even get this concept to a jury, much less get them to execute it. It's not a right in the state constitution, it's not a right by statute, and no court operating in Michigan recognizes a right to bring up the subject of nullification in the presence of a jury as an element of argument. If a judge, on his own or on a prosecutor's objection, refuses to let you discuss it [[as is overwhelmingly likely to happen), that's pretty much it - since courts of appeals look at that situation with the widest possible deference to the lower court.

And let's say you get through this whole process and a jury lets you off - that doesn't invalidate the law, and the next person up could well be convicted by a different jury. That, if anything, is the greatest indicator that jury nullification does not merit any systematic reliance on anyone's part.

If you want to base your argument on the source of the information, instead of the information contained within it, I expected better of you.

Jury nullification has had a long history in America.

It's been supported by founders like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson [[which says a lot since they had different views on how government should operate) and John Jay, first justice of the Supreme Court..

It was used by people opposed to slavery to find people innocent of the Fugitive Slave Act.

It was used by people opposed to Prohibition to release people convicted of violating the Volstead Act.

It was used by people to release Jack Kevorkian during one of his trials back in '94.

The last time that I checked, Michigan falls into those last three.

Judges are loathe to admit to juries today that they still have this authority, because it ultimately negates their power.

Speaking for myself, I find the whole civil disobedience thing [[getting arrested, going to jail and then court), counterproductive and a distraction to my personal life. I DO have other responsibilities and things that I like to do.

But if I were on that other side of the banister, how difficult do you really think it would be for me to convince those jurors that they had the power to overturn an unjust law in Detroit?

[Huggybear]

I think we probably agree about a lot of things, but I think you answered your own question - "reduce incidents that lead to claims." Certainly, there are meritorious claims that never get made - but unmeritorious claims do get made and still cost money, and a lot of nuisance-level suits get filed to exploit that. The City is on the receiving end of a lot of that.

Well, it is a creative theory of liability under Governmental Tort Immunity Act, which is exactly what I asked for.

If the City of Detroit is making Risk Management decisions to deter situations that could lead to frivolous claims then we are in real trouble.

Often even meritorious claims don't get filed because pursuing a lawsuit to completion involves an investment in time and money that has to be weighed against the probability of successful recovery.

The goal of Risk Management is to settle or defend both colorable and meritorious claims. In addition to the development of policies and practices to reduce incidents that lead to claims. Allocating resources to prevent the filing of frivolous claims is a waste as the risk of frivolous claims being filed can't be reduced [[beyond refusing to settle these claims).

The city has real liability issues to be concerned with such as the deterioration of its roadways and the provision of safe conditions for motorists, motorcyclists, and bicyclists. And a whole host of other issues.

Of course the city has an absolute right to close in the property and keep people off. I think this is a waste of resources if the potential liability or risk management is the justification for acting to establish this as a no trespassing area.

Possibly, the real reason to establish this is as a no trespassing area is to prevent the reestablishment of regular baseball play on the site. As people have brought up there is no development plan yet for this site http://www.degc.org/data/AddendumtoF...RFP7272010.pdf. There may or may not be a commitment to preserving the field. People gathering regularly to use the field as has been used for over 100 years could be the catalyst to reinvigorate members of the community who wish to see baseball preserved on the site.

[Huggybear]

How about the big field behind the Hurlbut Gate?

Since the city owns the land and the land is just now a field of grass, doesn't that make it public property? Come on DETROIT!

[manualshift]

f

I think we probably agree about a lot of things, but I think you answered your own question - "reduce incidents that lead to claims." Certainly, there are meritorious claims that never get made - but unmeritorious claims do get made and still cost money, and a lot of nuisance-level suits get filed to exploit that. The City is on the receiving end of a lot of that.

Well whatever I wrote, I meant that a risk management should work to reduce incidents that lead to claims that have a basis in the current law.

A risk management strategy should be based on preventing incidents and resulting claims that could be meritorious under the current law regardless of whether the suit ends up being meritorious or non-meritorious in the end.

A risk management strategy does not waste scarce resources on preventing incidents where the legal basis for a claim does not exist under current law the chances of success would be entirely speculative.