poutine wrote:
A Legal Lohengrin wrote:
poutine wrote:
And then, when he refused to pay it, they jailed him over it? Wtf? Could they have, perhaps, sent him a bill in the mail after he'd gone home? (Not a dollar bill. Rather, a bill for the dollar.)
That would have sort of failed to serve the purpose of a bond, which is that you put it up against a possible eventuality, and if that eventuality comes to pass, you forfeit it. Of course, a jury wouldn't understand this, which is why this kind of equitable issue is decided by a judge in a sane court.
Isn't the purpose of a bond defeated the moment you set it at an absurdly low amount?
Yes, obviously. In that event, a judge wouldn't set a bond. That's why equity is for judges. While it makes a certain amount of sense for a jury to give a dumb plaintiff $1 in damages, that purpose is not served in a case like this. Now, there is an appeals case over an arrest because of some jerk's refusal to pay $1.
That is not efficient, and the purpose of a bond is to discourage a foreseeable damage, and discourage it by basically forcing the foreseeable perp to cough up the damages in advance, then either not cause them or sacrifice the bond.
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This isn't like deciding to award a plaintiff in a civil case nominal damages. The "peace bond" had a purpose, supposedly. And when Jones defied that purpose, they threw him in jail. If it was so important to the state of Michigan, why was it one dollar?
As I have said at fairly great length, this is why this kind of thing should never have been put to a jury in the first place. It just gave Jones an opportunity to show off, be a douche, and cost taxpayers lots of money with an appeal to a higher court. If he was going to get to an appeals court, a JUDGE should have made the bond sizable. Not a jury that apparently had no clue whatsoever what the point of a bond is.
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