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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

The only way to stop this is for charges to be brought against the employees who made the bookings under false pretenses.

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Why should this be criminal and not civil?

They intended to defraud this home owner engaged under contract for their own profit. This wasn't unforeseeable or accidental damage nor due to a misunderstanding on their part.

It's also not a dichotomy. It can be both criminal and civil. Victims always have the right to seek compensation in parallel with criminal punishment.

Another excellent legal statement from The Mafia /s

Aside from the obvious joke, I feel like a lot of people miss that you can pursue BOTH civil and criminal cases for a given crime. If a billionaire murders your spouse you absolutely can sue them for wrongful death. That doesn't preclude them to also going to jail for 20+ years.

It's probably easier to handle as civil negligence. Criminal damage has an intent component. Of course it would hinge on discovery - as soon as you find an email to the effect of "we know this will cause damage, let's test it on someone else's house", that counts as intent.

Why the employees? Do you think they were operating without direction from their managers?

If we want to put a stop to this sort of behavior from businesses we can't be punishing employees for this behavior, we have to run it up the chain.

You are, in fact, allowed to hate both the player and the game. It is long established that "just following orders" is not a defense.

I'm not saying it should be, but I am saying we should prioritize the people giving the orders

> we should prioritize the people giving the orders

We should. I don’t see an easy way to do that.

I do think there is a straightforward case to be brought against the bookers. So I’m saying start there and then idk have them co-operate against the company.

Nah fuck them both. They went in an left apartments in disarray and didn't give a fuck. That's just basic human decency, regardless of whether or not your boss is a prick too.

I don’t know if the concept of the Nuremberg defense is really applicable to, you know, basic property damage.

I don't understand the alternative, that it would be legal to break the law as long as it were a petty crime and you were being paid to do it? It's a principle, it applies broadly. We tend to think about it in terms of the most dramatic and memorable example but that's neither here nor there.

Really?

You might want to ask most contractors, or contract lawyers, about that.

"I was just following orders" for basic property damage typically doesn't hold up in court for them either.

What, superior orders? Of course we need to punish both.

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