Martin Karne on 28/11/2010 at 03:16

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Thank the lord we can sue someone for skin cancer now!
Bring the class action forward!

demagogue on 28/11/2010 at 03:33

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Hi, Walt Raleigh here. This entire continent, yeah, I'll be claiming this for England now. I mean, I'm pointing at it and saying we want it. So it's ours. That and the sun. We claim that too. The sun and this continent now belong to us. So bugger off. Stay the hell off of our land and out of our sun.

... No, you're right. Completely different situation.

Edit: By the way, the law books are actually full of these kinds of cases. There are tons of whack people that are always trying to register property in heaven or hell, the moon, Mars (actually there's a little cottage industry in registering property claims on Mars; what's interesting is if Mars ever does get colonized in the far future, what law would even apply to analyze the claims?), or sue the devil and demons... For the most part courts have an easy way out because they don't have jurisdiction to adjudicate the claim; so at best it's just a kind of game people can play with each other and nothing deeper than that.

The native American case is interesting because the Supreme Court basically conceded in a famous case that there was no claim by any European that had real priority over Native claims; essentially conceding that the whole thing was an epic land-grab invented out of thin air, but cutting off any way for Natives to reclaim anything (since before the law existed there was no claim to reclaim); really interesting case. Later on Andrew Jackson ordered the Natives to be expelled from land they never relinquished, and when they brought a claim and he lost on a similar kind of logic (this time cutting in favor of the Natives), he expelled them anyway and famously said the Court made their decision, now let them enforce it. (Fortunately that would be inconceivable today.)

Phatose on 28/11/2010 at 05:16

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Sounds like a recipe for financial disaster. If a neighbor puts up a giant floodlight on their property, and it happens to illuminate mine as well, I don't owe them jack for any benefit gained.

If however, their spotlights manage to cause a fire on my property, I can sue and collect damages. Seeing as how the sun is the cause of all of the weather on this planet, the lawsuits for loss of livestock from floods and hurricanes alone would send her to a debtor's prison for all eternity.

Sulphur on 28/11/2010 at 11:19

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Assumptions being faulty? Uh, that's an understatement? She's an IQ-deficient moron. End of story.

Rug Burn Junky on 28/11/2010 at 17:38

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Arizona conservatives are already crafting legislation to prevent the influx of Spanish-language sunlight, just in case.