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Judge Rejects Sheriff's Suit Against Craigslist
jjohn24680 passes along word that a federal judge has thrown out a local sheriff's lawsuit accusing the online classified group Craigslist of facilitating prostitution. We discussed the case when it was filed back in March. Here is the decision (PDF). "As was pretty clear at the time, Craigslist is the service provider and is quite obviously protected by Section 230 immunity. ... Even after all of this was clearly explained to Sheriff Dart, he still insisted that his lawsuit made sense. It looks like the court system, however, does not agree. As expected, the case has been dismissed on Section 230 grounds."
The sheriff in question was no doubt trying to just drum up some publicity for himself. Remind me again why he's enforcing laws he clearly doesn't understand?
The sheriff in question was no doubt trying to just drum up some publicity for himself. Remind me again why he's enforcing laws he clearly doesn't understand?
You don't realize how right you are. From Mr. Dart's Wikipedia page:
In October 2008, Dart made national news when he announced that he was suspending all foreclosure evictions in Cook County. The number of such evictions had increased dramatically since 2006 as a result of the national subprime mortgage crisis. Dart stated that many of the people being evicted were renters who had faithfully paid their rent but had not known that their landlord was in financial trouble. He explained that in many cases, mortgage companies had not fulfilled their obligation to identify tenants in the foreclosed properties, and said, "These mortgage companies only see pieces of paper, not people, and don't care [...] who gets hurt along the way ... We're not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We're just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today."
The Illinois Bankers Association was critical of Dart, accusing him of "ignoring his legal responsibilities" and of engaging in "vigilantism".
Dart says that he is enforcing an Illinois state law which requires the banks to determine whether the persons resident at an address are actually the persons to whom the foreclosure notice should be served.
Due largely to these efforts, Time Magazine named Dart one of its 100 most influential people for 2009.
That last sentence will probably have him championing things (or rather trying) for the rest of his life. I have the feeling this ain't the end of the Craigslist shenanigans nor is it the last thing Mr. Dart will overstep his duties on. He's got a J.D. from Loyola University and a Bachelor's Degree in History and General Social Studies from Providence College. What is he doing trying to practice law?
My work here is dung.
It's nice to see this ruling. Escorts and such have been advertising in local newspaper classified ads for YEARS now and nobody seemed to care. No matter what they do they're NOT going to stop prostitution because at the end of the day it's a "crime" between willing adults. There's no victim to complain to anyone because every person involved is happy if at the end of the day no law enforcement ever shows their face.
In reality though, the truth is that a lot of times strip clubs, brothels, and other such activities are giving kickbacks to SOMEBODY in power, somewhere. I've seen it time and time again. For example strip clubs here are not supposed to feature fully naked dancers and dancers are not supposed to be on the club floor when exposed. Generally they ignore the floor rule, and will just wrap their panties around their wrist when on stage to comply with the first (they're still wearing them, just not in the proper location). Every now and then though they'll get pressured to comply, resulting in the panties staying on and the bouncers literally having to carry the girls on their shoulders from stage to stage so that the girl never touches the floor, until the club owner pays off whoever is pressuring him. Then it's back to business as usual. The same is true for most escort services and such. The older more established services stay there pretty much until the owner decides to get out of the business. New services jump into and out of existence on a monthly basis. Simple reason is that the older services have figured out who they have to pay to be left alone.
My guess is that a lot of this backlash against Craigslist is simply that with everything being done on the Internet it's making it easier for people to get these dealings done without the officials getting their due cut of the cash, and that just doesn't go over well.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Even if his suspension of foreclosures was a stunt to get him publicity, there are still reasonable people (like me) who thought it was the right thing to do.
Why? Because people a huge number of the foreclosures are going forward even though banks themselves can't even produce the mortgage paperwork! Because of all weird financial instruments that helped cause the mortgage crisis (cutting the mortgages up into securities and such) these corporations can't find the original paperwork. I don't know the exact numbers on this, but it's a big percentage.
There are Members of Congress that are saying the same thing: make the companies actually PRODUCE the paperwork! This is how lax the U.S. has become on the financial industry.
So, Dart might be a pompous windbag, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is wrong.
When you say "local sheriff", it makes it sound like he's the sheriff of some small town. In fact, Tom Dart is the sheriff of Cook County, which contains Chicago, is the second most populous county in the U.S, and his department is the second largest in the U.S.
People claiming Dart is drumming up publicity are pretty much correct. Keep in mind, we're talking Chicago here, so consider the history of the political machine here. Dart also refused to evict renters from houses when their landlords lost the mortgage. In a way, this is an honorable thing to do, but the way it played out, everyone read it as once again more publicity for Dart. The Craigslist case just further proves his motives.
Banks and other instutitions have flagrantly ignoredfederal and state laws, and in many cases it appears that they screwed up so badly that no one actually has legal standing to forclose!
That's despite the fact that it is perfectly legal to open-carry in Wisconsin!
The police frequently think anything goes in enforcing the law, even violating "little laws" to enforce "big laws" is ok.
If only we went back to the old American model in which the police not only did not have a monopoly on enforcing the law (any private citizen could arrest you and bring you to a court), but anyone who broke the law while enforcing the law was civilly and criminally liable to their victim.
Yea, that's fine and dandy for people who bought property and are being evicted by shady bank practices, but it completely screws landlords who run their businesses legitimately. The news has even covered it. I understand suspending evictions for people being worked over by the system, but not an across the board suspensions.