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> Sue the paper company?

Yes.

> For what damages?

Your time. It has value.

> What court would waste 8 minutes on something like that?

Small claims. This sort of thing is what it's there for.

Don't get me wrong: the judge will be annoyed at the pettiness. BUT. As long as the judge sees that you went way above and beyond in trying to resolve the issue out of court, and you ask for reasonable damages, they will be pissed about the pettiness but the wrath will be applied to the other party.

For me:

1. I spent literally years trying to resolve the issue. Dozens of letters, phone calls, etc.

2. I asked for "2.49 times (my hourly rate times the number of hours I spent dealing with the issue)" because the statutory damage multiple was lower-bounded by 2 and upper-bounded by 3). I only billed for hours during the 9-5 work day when I was consulting, and only time during the work day when I was taking vacation time from a W2 job.

3. I included some of the time I spent on contacting them and writing letters, but not all of it. I told the judge that the sum included only time spent after my third letter, when it became clear that taking them to court might be the only possible resolution.

4. I apologized on behalf of both parties that something so silly couldn't be resolved out of court, and stressed that I tried really hard for years to work with the business owner.

In your case, asking for $1k or so would probably be fairly reasonable after a year or two of trying to resolve the issue, especially given the confrontation with the driver and the smoke-up-your-ass about renting.

Judges really do not want you to waste their time. The key is to demonstrate that you are also exasperated by the fact that the court was the only way to resolve your disagreement.

thank you, food for thought

> Judges really do not want you to waste their time.

That's kind of funny, given that it's small claims court. I mean, I understand that it's a fee for littering, and not causing physical harm -- but... What else are you supposed to do if someone is habitually littering?

I don’t know if I’d want to anger an angry thug, who knows where I live, and who already almost beat me up when I waited for him the last time around.

I would say you definitely should take them to court because it makes clear to them that you have teeth.

You’re not a violent criminal, so the way you solve disputes is with the force of law.

If you win but they don’t stop the behaviour then take them to court again. Small claims court is really cheap.

If they try to mess with you outside, well courts take an extremely dim view of that. Far in excess of any initial judgment.

If the thug doesn’t know that then they are going to prison for contempt of court.

You'd be taking the owner to court, who probably isn't the one delivering the papers.

I am not a lawyer, but there are two things here:

1) if they're entering your property without your permission, that is trespassing. If they've been doing it for ~15 years, you probably have a good case for reasonable damages worth more than 8 minutes of a courts time. You can start collecting evidence, sending a certified letter to the business requesting they stop delivery, and bring a lawsuit against the company. The courts are obligated to follow the law, and if your jurisdiction is like mine (WA State), you can sue for reasonable costs--investigation, 15-years worth of trash delivery (what is that like 10 garbing bins worth?) attorney fees, and ask for punitive damages (15 years of this behavior is clearly a nuisance, and you will likely find a sympathetic judge/magistrate). Of course, just because you get a judgement in your favor does not mean you will easily be able to collect. So that leads me to

2) They are also illegally littering on your property, which is a crime, and of which you can involve the police. As others have noted, this is a low priority offense to the police, but you can collect evidence (video recording of them doing it), and a certified letters requesting they stop. Armed with that evidence, you should be able to request the police to come and fine the driver for doing so. The police won't respond right away, but with enough persistence on your part they will. Depending on your jurisdiction, you could also elicit the help of your local city/county councilperson to get the police to take action sooner.

Accessing the walkway to the front door and knocking on the front door is not trespassing, even if there is signs posted. Wandering off the path, going around the back, looking in windows is trespassing - but accessing the front door to deliver, ask for directions, or invite someone to tea is not. You can be asked to leave which then could be turned into trespassing. Decent write up about it - https://www.radford.edu/content/cj-bulletin/home/june--2017-...

We're not talking about knocking on doors. We're talking about entering their property and repeatedly leaving trash.

> You can be asked to leave which then could be turned into trespassing.

The OP definitely asked for the deliveries to stop, and even had a confrontation with the delivery driver. Seems pretty clear that he's expressed his preference that they not enter his property.

Typically renting has no bearing on refusing mail delivered. It's your current domicile. If they are coming into your property to deliver the mail, you could post no trespassing and call the cops on them.

Courts spend time on all manner of things, so in fact they would spend 8 minutes on it.

Not sure what the Canadian trespass laws are but would that work?

In the UK you’d have to ask a trespasser to leave first as it’s a civil matter.

If they don’t leave immediately or they threaten you then it’s criminal and you can call the cops.

So if you don’t catch them trespassing you can’t really do anything about it later.

Does Canada treat trespass a crime?

Here, if damage is done during trespass that’s also different. Which is why I think I’d go the small claims court route for the cost of clean up and time spent dealing with it.

In Netherland mailboxes often have a no/no or yes/no sticker to indicate whether they want to receive free newspapers and junk mail. Deliverers tend to be reasonably good (though not perfect) at obeying these.

In the USA it's illegal for anyone other than the Postal Service to place anything in your mailbox. Technically, they own your mailbox, even though you have to provide it at your expense.

That's why they are dumping the advertising on his driveway, and why newspapers often provided a separate box for your newspaper that you mount below or beside your mailbox. I used past tense because we have no local newspaper anymore.

If they put this crap in your mailbox, they'd be committing a federal crime and postal inspectors would probably track them down if they got enough complaints.

> In the USA it's illegal for anyone other than the Postal Service to place anything in your mailbox.

how does this work with outgoing mail?

The law reads something like

>statute that prohibited the deposit of unstamped “mailable matter” in a mailbox

I assume the outgoing mail, if stamped, is ok. Edit; UPS may even be able to use it if the item has postage paid, but in that case they would just have USPS deliver it.

> how does this work with outgoing mail?

A more complete (but still not fully so) statement is that it is generally illegal for anyone but you and the postal service to put anything into your mailbox, and it is also generally illegal for anyone but you and the postal service to take anything out.

Sounds like the postal service picks up your mail from your own mailbox? That's completely different from the situation in NL. Here, we post our outgoing mail in big red mailboxes that exist solely for that purpose, but anyone can put stuff in your mailbox, which is usually in your door, so mail arrives on your doormat.

I feel like that system has broken down in recent years, since for delivering junk mail, so many refugees have been hired (as an easily exploitable and desperate workforce), who don’t yet have much knowledge of the local culture and how important those stickers are here.

I've had to educate a couple of delivery people on the meaning of 'no' but otherwise it has worked very well for me.

In Australia we'll have a little no junk mail or no unsolicited mail sign and most box stuffers are good at following that even though there's no legal obligation - except real-estate agents. They suck.

I saw one as I was leaving one day who had just left a typical pamphlet in our mailbox. I pointed out the no junk unsolicited sign and he started on how it was important information I may be interested in.

I suggested that while that was a nice rationalisation, he knows it's bullshit and he should get his hand off it.

Those kinds of things tickle the crazy part of my brain. This would make me want to save up a year's worth of papers (maybe collect them from my neighbors who want to participate) and quietly return them to the door or lobby of the business in question. Bonus if they've been sitting outside the entire time.

I had a similar problem. I opened the paper, found the small print with a phone number I could call to cancel the "subscription", and after a few weeks, the physical spam stopped showing up.

Talking to the person delivering the paper will likely result in nothing; they don't own the business, and are likely contracted to deliver the stuff. You don't pay them, so they have no incentive to listen to you. (Although the violence is weird and unexpected. What did you say to them?

(I delivered untargeted physical spam in my early teens, a TV guide)

Why you think the person who's delivering doesn't have an incentive to listen?

They're paid to deliver to N addresses, if they know that X, Y, Z addresses don't want the delivery they're still getting paid for N deliveries.

When I did this job looooong ago I'd get a stack of papers, along with a strike-though list of addresses that shouldn't be delivered to, as those people had contacted the publisher.

But over the course of doing this job for a summer or two I'd also have people instead ask me to stop delivering in person, which I could use to overlay my own strike-though list at the beginning.

Those were much better, as unlike the first list they didn't subtract from the N, free money!

Clearly that didn't work for the GP for whatever reason, but I think it should in general. Then again this was a different time, and not even the same continent, YMMV.

They aren't told to deliver to any specific addresses. This is 100% why they can't actually comply with a request not to deliver. The guy in the truck doesn't have some list of addresses and has no time or capacity to be consulting any such list even if he had one. He has a route and the route is whole streets, and probably has to cover many whole streets every day, and probably gets paid almost nothing for it, and so probably goes to some other job after that every day. Some individual exceptions like remember this house and that house is probably utterly impossible.

Their unworkable business model shouldn't be my problem so I'm not excusing them, just saying what the realities probably are.

In the scenario I described you'll need to consult or maintain such a list anyway.

This'll differ by jurastiction, but in most of Europe you're allowed to deliver unrequested advertisements by post, but you're obligated to stop when asked.

I'm saying that in my case the paper boy was incentivised to oblige, but not inform the head office.

> Some individual exceptions like remember this house and that house is probably utterly impossible.

Most people (even the uneducated, or otherwise considered dumb) can remember and sing along to the lyrics of hundreds of songs, and remember the location of hundreds or even thousands of items kept in their house.

So even if you're delivering to hundreds of addresses you'll quickly start to remember the exceptions, at least that was my experience.

I think both you and the comment above you are assuming that the person on the other side of the phone isn't an ass. If they are, they're likely to make up things about renters and they're likely to be abusive to the person doing the deliveries.

I usually try to charitable when interpreting other people's actions, but... There's always a possibility that someone's just mean.

You are forgiven for taking this with salt, but I swear I did not open the dialog outwardly as annoyed as I was inwardly.

I picked up the paper and tried to give it back (not by throwing it at him I swear). I live one house from the end of a dead end, and so he has to stop and back up or turn around so I approached the driver side while he was stopped.

I won't say I stayed perfectly bland and pleasant by the end but I didn't come out swinging or yelling. I never did more than just say "I don't want this" though.

I chalked it up to they probably just have a hard life with far more and worse stresses and worries than I. I actually feel bad for them having to do that job.

I mean theoretically this is littering, and theoretically police should stop people from littering. But I agree this would basically never happen.

> I mean theoretically this is littering, and theoretically police should stop people from littering.

The police (and public prosecutors) have no duty to stop anything, and are in theory free to prioritize their efforts against illegal activity anyway they want so long as they don’t violate, e.g., anti-discrimination law in how they do. And, in practice, they are free to prioritize even more freely than that.

Of course, leaving unwanted material on someone else’s property is also the tort of trespass to land, so if you can identify the tortfeasor you can act directly against them rather than trying to convince public authorities to prioritize prosecution of the offense.

Right. The job the police is actually not to help you or defend you or protect you or to recover your stolen stuff or anything like that.

Their job is to maintain order and protect all of society. They track down the guy that robbed you because society doesn't want robbers on the loose, not for you because you were injured.

Same here, once a week. Well I've never caught the driver in action, not that it would matter anyway. For me this is a local paper printed and distributed by the San Jose Mercury News. Yes that Mercury News. Phone calls always get a full voicemail box, and emails are of course unanswered! I just realized, I will need to call their advertising line to get this stopped.

Hose him down next time he comes.

Yes, the right move is definitely to assault a person who's doing the job he was hired to do.

Just following orders, eh?

Are you seriously comparing someone delivering newspapers to being a part of the Wehrmacht during the Nazi regime?

It starts small. It always starts small. Suggest reading some Arendt.

Besides, littering isn't necessarily small potatoes around here. There are signs at the roadside that warn of potential fines exceeding $6000.

Is he littering on the public roadway where those fines apply? Because if he is, you probably don’t have any defensible private interest at all.

If he isn’t, the sign is irrelevant.

Hard to say, that'd be something to ask a local attorney. Which you can bet I'd do, if people were illegally dumping trash on my property.

No, I'm saying that dumping a ton of rubbish outside someone's house is not something that a well adjusted person does regardless of whether someone tells them to do it.

But if you must - it's even less of a defense now, because in WW2 Germany there was a significant amount of social pressure to fall in line. In the modern day no-one cares if you just refuse, or get a different job.

He's already been asked to stop. If he doesn't wanna get hosed he could simply quit as requested. A bit of water isn't gonna kill him.

It's still a crime. Getting unwanted newspapers is not something worth committing a crime over. Let alone provoking someone identified already as being violent.

Serious question: is it really a crime to throw water on somebody in the US?

I'd almost bet money that it's assault if the target decides it is.

Gently putting your hand on someone's shoulder is assault if it's unwanted. Water is less pleasant.

Here's some people on a random website claiming to be lawyers, but also saying the right words: that they can't give specific legal advice and that the OP should not do that and/or get a lawyer. https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-i-be-charged-or-arres...

It may be simple battery (the usual standard is “harmful or offensive touching”, without a legal excuse, including by causing any object to do that.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/sf-man-sprayed-unhous...

There's an article from San Francisco about a man being charged after hosing down a homeless woman. Ultimately the charges were dropped, but the answer to your question is yes with caveats.

If someone paid me to punch you in the face, is that okay because I'm just doing my job?

No.

But also, it's a terrible analogy because a punch to the face is potentially lethal force but delivering a newspaper isn't. Which, obviously, matters.

Spraying someone with a hose in this situation is battery. Unless the newspaper is being launched at your person with a potato gun, you're going to have a hard time coming up with a defense against that battery charge.

Unlikely, but not worth it. Also, MUCH more importantly, wrong target. Don't go after the laborer. Go after the capitalist paying him to harass you. Go after the owner's wallet and time, not the delivery guy's clothing.

"it puts the paper in the bin or else it gets the hose again"

I'm more of a creative application of wasp nest that just happens to be right where he turns around kind of guy.

In my head anyway. Apparently I'm more of a "well you can't look at any other part of my house and call me fastidious, so whatever my front yard has permanent trash" kind of guy.

> Years ago a few times I waited and watched and confronted the guy when he actually showed up, I almost got beat up! Mexican couple and the guys wife had to hold him back from getting them I into trouble)

Just out of curiosity, how did you know they were Mexican and how is it relevant?

Reminds me of own struggles a while back with people upstairs actually slamming doors and drawers around at 3 AM, sometimes as late as 5 AM. How is there nothing that can legally be done to stop something like that? It's insane.

Sounds like the sort of noise complaint that you can talk to the neighbor, the landlord, or the condo association but legal avenues are probably going to get you laughed at.

Yes, I contacted all of them, only the landlord bothered to do anything. If the noisemakers had been the owners I would have had no recourse other than to move. That's ridiculous.