Parents Forced to Pay After They Threw Out Son’s Porn Collection
One of the past several year's strangest ongoing stories has finally reached its climax. WNYT is reporting that a couple will have to pay $30,441 to their son over lost property. In this case, said lost property was their 43-year-old son's extensive porn collection. The mother and father had apparently tossed it all out after their son had moved out of state. Why does this all sound like a line out of a Beastie Boys song?
Huffington Post says that the man had moved back in with his parents in Grand Haven, Michigan after a divorce in 2016. When he eventually picked up and moved out to Indiana, he noticed something important was missing. According to the man's attorney, what was missing "...was a collection of often irreplaceable items and property". A judge referred to it as “a trove of pornography and an array of sex toys.” Just how much missing smut are we talking about here? A court record later showed that 1,605 titles of pornographic DVDs and VHS tapes and at least 50 sex toys and paraphernalia were thrown away. Guess this guy doesn't believe in digital and likes to keep it old school?
MLive.com says that's the man's father confessed in an email to destroying the vast collection, and said "I did you a big favor getting rid of all this stuff”. Mlive says that the parents had told their son not to bring the porn into their home. A judge said they wouldn't let him come back to retrieve it either, but said that the parents told their son they would ship it to him. That supposedly never happened.
In late 2020, a U.S. District Judge in Kalamazoo granted the son’s request for summary judgment in his favor. In addition to the over 30K damages, the parents have been told they'll have to pay their son's attorney $14,500.