I'm the Original Poster.
Dave, yes I couldn't agree more, but my question is this:
IF the security people had only the false beep to go on, and IF the
scurrilous fraudster was successfull in pulling the wool over everyone's
eyes, and IF the security people took the bait and manhandled him into a
back room(regardless of how likely this is to occur in reality , lets just
say for the sake of argument that it did) then, after all that, would not a
judge, MAYBE, award the guy(wrongly, of course, but he isn't in posession of
all the facts)compensation?
Isn't there even the slimmest possibility that, given those admittedly
unlikey conditions, the scurrilous fraudsters just MIGHT be successfull?
That's all my question was and I deeply regret any hard feelings or
arguments it may have caused.


"Dave Balcom" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 06:55:38 -0500, Mark wrote:

}Once again, the fact that it was completely defective will have nothing
to do
}with it.

True, if the detector normally works OK and one time gave a false alarm
then you can make the argument under "good faith" that you thought it was
working correctly (since it had in the past). On the flip side, if the
detector goes off several times a day/week with false positives, then that
is an entirely different set of circumstances. That is reality.

BTW, I am NOT a lawyer (but did stay in a Holiday Inn G). However, I
have
been a policeman for 22+ years now and have some experience with good
faith
defenses (i.e. reasonable belief). I cannot speak for other states though
so we may both be right...

Going full circle to the original post, purposely triggering an alarm on
the hope of making some money later is just as bad as making an arrest
based on only an alarm going off...


Later,
Dave