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How times change!
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
Very strange little story doing the rounds in Ireland right now...
If I'd been accused of stealing a bag of crisps from a supermarket when I was five years old, this certainly wouldn't have happened:
"A five-year-old Irish boy who was wrongly accused of stealing a bag of crisps has won 7,500 euros damages for defamation of character. The case, reported in the Irish Times on Wednesday, concerned Tadhg Mooney from Balbriggan in County Dublin. The court heard he was in a local branch of Lidl with his mother in June 2009 when a shop assistant grabbed his arm and made the accusation. His barrister told the court her client had suffered injury to his reputation."
Fucking hell...
If I'd been accused of stealing a bag of crisps from a supermarket when I was five years old, this certainly wouldn't have happened:
"A five-year-old Irish boy who was wrongly accused of stealing a bag of crisps has won 7,500 euros damages for defamation of character. The case, reported in the Irish Times on Wednesday, concerned Tadhg Mooney from Balbriggan in County Dublin. The court heard he was in a local branch of Lidl with his mother in June 2009 when a shop assistant grabbed his arm and made the accusation. His barrister told the court her client had suffered injury to his reputation."
Fucking hell...
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
if the shop offered a small bit of compensation, then it'd be wrong to pursue, but if they just shrugged it off, well that's well out of order....
Grrrrr, I'm so inconvenienced. That'll be €7,500 please!
I know it's the Mail, but it certainly gives more detail.
I don't have a problem with this at all. I know Lidl's supposedly cheap, but it's a still a massive supermarket chain (and german ) and if they've done wrong they should cough up.
claims are often strange in size because it really depends who is suing who. It may be the case that if found guilty, the chain would have faced a punitive payment of much more, so just tried to pay off the kid to drop the case.
We all know in our hearts that a shop keeper has no right to detain you, even if it's their shop - they're just another citizen. That's right and natural that another human being has no right to detain you just because they're suspicious of you. We only afford police officers (and other people in special circumstances) that ability.
People do like to rage on about compensation culture though, it's terribly fashionable don't you know?
Doesn't Citizen's Arrest counter-act that?
If they see you stealing something they certainly do.
If the person you're apprehending is absolutely and utterly guilty. Citizen's arrest isn't to encourage people to go around crime fighting, more as a protection for the person in case there is a crime occuring and they intervene (when it was not reasonable for a PC to do so).
In this case, the boy even managed to get a settlement saying he -wasnt- guilty.
That's a decent foundation for a case of unlawful imprisonment right there.
A shop manager has no right to stop you leaving his shop and demand that you show him evidence that the goods you have on you belong to you - they have absolutely no investigative powers given by law. If they deemed you to have committed a crime, e.g. saw you take the good, saw you leave the shop without paying, then they may stop you and wait for a PC to take over.
We already live in a society where too many people think they 'own' other people, the fact is it's completely the other way around. Everyone is given the right to freedom, and only in special circumstances or those who have been afforded special powers may curtail those freedoms.
Touché
You win... this time
A child cannot represent themselves legally. And even if it were her reputation, then that's not a bad thing. Parents are responsible I feel for the actions of their children.