<p>He can investigate, it’s not illegal.</p>
<p>Now some blog reports–not sure how credible they are–are stating that Holloway’s house was already in foreclosure and in a state of disrepair with broken doors and windows and covered in graffiti even before the big party. Same reports state local teens had been using it for parties for a long time, believing it to be abandoned.</p>
<p>That’s obviously not a reason to trash it, or even to hold a party there. It was, after all, someone’s property, and the price it brings in a foreclosure sale could be affected by the additional vandalism. But if true, these reports do seem to raise questions about whether Holloway is being entirely above board here.</p>
<p>There is an imbedded video of the house in this link. Doesn’t look like a house which is in disrepair to me (except for the damage done by the partiers.) </p>
<p>[Teens</a> Trash Ex-NFL Player’s Home And Parents Are Mad At Him? : The Two-Way : NPR](<a href=“Teens Trash Ex-NFL Player's Home And Parents Are Mad At Him? : The Two-Way : NPR”>Teens Trash Ex-NFL Player's Home And Parents Are Mad At Him? : The Two-Way : NPR)</p>
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<p>I couldn’t disagree more strongly. By all means the sheriff’s office should investigate and turn the evidence over to the county prosecutor if criminal offenses were committed, which seems likely. But it’s completely wrong-headed to think a victimized property owner and his insurer have an obligation to just sit back and await the outcome of a criminal investigation and criminal prosecutions before trying to get to the bottom of what happened and filing a civil action to recover damages. There are lots of reasons the kids who vandalized the property may never be prosecuted and convicted. Many or most may be juveniles, for one things, and the juvenile justice system will try to channel most cases away from full-scale criminal prosecution. Criminal convictions also require proof beyond reasonable doubt, and that may be an obstacle. There may be problems with the admissibility of some of the evidence, which could make some criminal cases too weak to go to trial. </p>
<p>But vandalizing someone’s property is a tort as well as a crime, and the victimized property owner has every right to seek legal redress in a civil action whether or not anyone is ever prosecuted and convicted of a criminal offense. They can and should go after everyone involved for money damages, not just those who are found guilty of crimes. And in the course of considering that option and preparing for a possible civil action, the property owner and his insurer have every right to do their own fact-finding and collection of evidence. What you call “taking the law into his own hands” is exactly what our legal system requires every plaintiff in a civil action to do. It’s not the sheriff’s job to develop evidence for a possible civil suit. That’s the job of the private party plaintiff. Any evidence developed by the sheriff’s investigation may be relevant to the outcome of that civil suit, but it would be irresponsible of the plaintiffs in the civil suit not to do their own fact-finding because it might turn up additional evidence, additional wrong-doers, and possibly even exculpatory evidence as to some suspects that the sheriff doesn’t have.</p>
<p>Whether or not he had homeowner’s insurance is immaterial. Even if he did, there is no way it would come close to covering the damage. My sister’s house was broken into (and completely trashed) a year ago and she is STILL dealing with it. She and her husband had a major net loss even after the insurance claim was settled. Yes, they will cover the things that are easy to document and identify, but they estimate they came up short somewhere between $10k-$15k on things they had no way of proving they owned (i.e., jewelry that wasn’t on a rider).</p>
<p>Agree with what most of the others have said about the parents being out of line.</p>
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<p>But how do you know which party, and which partiers, caused which damage? Sounds like there’s video evidence for some of it, but the point of the reports circulating today is that at least some neighbors are saying Holloway had been away from this house for a very long time, possibly years, and that local kids had been partying there repeatedly over an extended period of time. If these reports are to be believed, the damage was cumulative, not all the result of a single party. And if that’s the case, it’s pretty easy to see how the vandalism might have escalated in severity over time–kids had a party in a house they believed to be abandoned, did some damage, no owner ever showed up to make repairs or complain about their behavior, so the next time it got a little more out of control, and so on. That doesn’t excuse any of it. But it does, IMO, place some measure of responsibility on the neglectful owner. And it does make the owner seem a little less sympathetic a figure if he is now disingenuously trying to pin all the responsibility for long-accumulating damage on kids who attended a particular party on a particular night, when in fact others on other nights might have caused some of the damage. Then again, the reports circulating today might just be wrong.</p>
<p>I still think he and/or his insurance company should sue for damages and let the facts come out at trial.</p>
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<p>^^^And sally, we have a really large deductible on our second home insurance. I wouldn’t be oh so happy to just take that lying down.</p>
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I brought up insurance only in regard to whether he’d have to pay for his own defense against the parents’ suits. No one would assume that insurance would cover all his damages.</p>
<p>BC, there were 300 or so kids at this one party - if anyone doesn’t believe there was a lot of damage done by them, I’ve got bridge to sell them. There was another party a few years back st another house in the same general area and over $200k damage was done and there were only 90 or so kids at that one.</p>
<p>chedva, my comment was primarily in response to this statement:</p>
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<p>The other noteworthy thing about this story is that of the 300 or so kids involved, only ONE took up the offer to help clean up the house. I am not sure what kind of area this house is in but they seem to raise them differently than a lot of us here would. Of course, they were probably told by their parents not to go as a CYA in case they got sued.</p>
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<p>I didn’t say (or mean) an obligation. I made some broad assumptions here that if Holloway is on the fence on whether or not he’s even going to press charges, and has already set up this fund to cover his losses, then civil action was not even in the cards, unless he does have insurance and files a claim. Why would he set up a fund for people to donate to if he’s going to pursue civil action? Again, his message is that he set up this website and offered amnesty to kids who came forward because he wanted to be a positive change in their lives (or something along those lines) The question is, now that the kids didn’t come forward, how far is he going to extend that amnesty? I hadn’t considered that he might decide not to press charges, but then take civil action, instead. </p>
<p>Regarding the ages of the kids present, in one report I read that, of 300+ kids who were supposedly in attendance, ‘many’ were not of legal drinking age, so that suggests that some were, which would mean they are 21 or older. I read in one report, also, that one of his kids was the first to recognize via twitter that this party was going on because he saw some friends tweeting about it, but the article didn’t indicate which of his sons it was, or how old they were.</p>
<p>Oh, and from the article that emilybee linked:
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<p>This is what I’d been hoping to discover all along, that he is cooperating with the investigation.</p>
<p>^only one smart kid out of 300 lol :-)</p>
<p>to those that may have joined late in the game, the mention of homeowners insurance some time ago referred to one poster’s opinion that homeowners insurance might protect the landowner against lawsuits incl suits for defamation.
x- posted w/ Chedva post 48.</p>
<p>And, I can certainly see the point of accepting donations even if a person intends to file civil suit.
First, the obvious, what if a person later chooses not to file
Second, what if the plaintiff doesn’t win the suit?
3rd, what if the plaintiff wins but the amount doesn’t cover all damages?
4th, what if plaintiff wins, but doesn’t get paid?</p>
<p>Does it really matter if the property was in the process of being foreclosed? The little punks still trespassed on private property and vandalized the place. I’ll refrain from commenting on the parents because the language I want to use to describe them will probably result in me being banned.</p>
<p>Well, yes. Does it matter the circumstances of when, how long, how often kids were there? Would you accept from YOUR kids that it had happened before, so no big deal?</p>
<p>Do we not teach personal accountability and responsibility and choice and consequences any more?</p>
<p>Not many do, Garland.
Deny Deny and delay delay is much more common.
And let’s don’t forget the good old- get a lawyer to try to escape consequences tactic.</p>
<p>He gave the kids a second chance to come help. Four showed up yesterday.</p>
<p>OUT OF 300!</p>
<p>This letter in the community paper pretty much nails it.</p>
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<p>[An</a> Open Letter to Parents in Rensselaer County | Chuck and Kelly](<a href=“http://www.wgy.com/pages/chuckandkelly.html?article=11670767]An”>http://www.wgy.com/pages/chuckandkelly.html?article=11670767)</p>
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<p>Because if he sets up a fund for donations he can get that money fast and possibly make some repairs before the house is sold either in a voluntary transaction or at a foreclosure sale. Reports are saying he owes over $1 million on the house. If it sells for less than that at a foreclosure sale–which it might if the damage is extensive–he could still be on the hook for the deficiency. But even if he gets enough donations to repair all the damage, it seems to me he still has a legal claim for the damages. And civil litigation can take a very long time.</p>
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<p>Criminal prosecution of these kids doesn’t help him all that much. A civil suit might. And others may differ, but if 300 kids tore up my property at an out-of-control party, I’d be more interested in getting compensated for my loss than in getting them all into the criminal justice system. Not to say some young adult (non-juvenile) ringleaders shouldn’t be prosecuted, but ultimately that’s the DA’s call, not the property owner’s.</p>
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<p>I don’t think anyone is suggesting the 300 kids at that party didn’t cause a lot of damage. But I don’t think you can pin all the damage on the particular kids who attended that particular party if, in fact, kids had previously partied there and caused damage to that same property. I’m certainly not suggesting this excuses the damage they did cause–not legally, not morally. But I think it changes our understanding of the situation if in fact this had been going on for a long time, possibly over a period of years, with non-identical groups of kids at a succession of parties that resulted in vandalism. First off, it makes criminal prosecutions or civil suits immensely more complicated because it may be very hard to prove what damage was caused when and by whom. Second, it suggests a greater level of complicity–perhaps not in a legal sense but in a moral sense–by at least some adults in the community, because surely some neighbors would have noticed large numbers of kids congregating at this place periodically and did nothing to notify the authorities or the owner. Third, at least in my mind, it changes the way I view the property owner. If this was a one-time event, it’s easy to feel sympathy with him as an innocent victim. If it happened in a series of events over a long period of time, then he’s still an innocent victim, but he’s also a bit of a chump, in part a victim of his own neglect. He should have checked up on the place periodically, or had someone local check up on it for him. Then after it happened the first time he could have notified the sheriff to keep an eye out for any recurrence; and he could have repaired any damage, signalling to people in the community that this property was not, in fact, abandoned, as some now apparently claim they believed. None of this reduces the legal and moral culpability of the kids who trespassed on his property and did the damage. But I’m sorry, there’s only so much sympathy I can gin up for a property owner who neglects to look after his property.</p>
<p>To me, it’s akin to leaving your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition. Of course it’s just as wrong for someone to steal it, but you’re only asking for trouble, and some of the responsibility is yours.</p>