Law and Pranks

[craftomega]

Is a victim of a prank who acted naturally given the situation at fault for breaking the law?

You are asleep, someone sneaks up on you and blows an air horn in your face, you wake up scared shitless and punch them in the face, breaking their jaw. Should you be convicted with assault?

Take this example and apply it to other pranks, in what cases would the victim be at fault? And it what cases would they be innocent?

 

[Kopikatsu]

You wouldn't be convicted of assault in that case, because if the situation occurred exactly as you described it there, then there wouldn't be sufficient intent on the part of the person who was woken up for it to constitute a willingly hostile action.

 

[craftomega]

constitute a willingly hostile action.

Ah thats what I was missing, I knew that it would be unlikly but I could not figure out why.

 

[DoPo]

Well, isn't the person with the airhorn breaking the law already? Or something. I'm pretty sure "sneaking into somebody's room and blowing an airhorn a them" is not actually one of the rights you're granted by the consitution or local equivalent. Then again, it may depend on the country, I suppose.

 

[Muspelheim]

I've had to deal with a self-proclaimed "fun-loving prankster", myself. Briefly, I don't think they should be given special treatment when their stupid, irresponsible schemes go awry and backfires in their face.

Good pranksters are the ones who make sure that doesn't happen, and won't have to cry about it in court afterwards.

 

[Ratties]

A coworker that I hated a couple of years back. Really annoying and a kiss ass to boot. Could care less about the ass kissing, but he would bring our names up to the supervisor. He won the supervisor over because he was doing his work for him.(Supervisor was a lazy piece of crap.) I took his lunch one day and put it on a big wigs desk that pretty much hated all of us. Eventually shut the door and never brought it up. After all, I worked graveyard. Remember getting stoked when it was 6:00 in the morning. Carl was the guys name who hated us. He got there at 7:00 am. I remember him coming downstairs, throwing a fit about the lunch. Eventually the kiss ass knew what was up when his lunch was being held by a guy that would fire you if you so much as pointed in the direction of his office. After he got fired, I kept my head down and pretended to care right along with my lazy ass supervisor.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Generally I find threads about "the law" that don't specify a jurisdiction very annoying. In this case though, the question proceeds from the assumption that whatever local laws there are have been broken anyway, so fair enough.

Anyway, a good test is "would the 'reasonable person' behave that way" (that sort of thing comes up in Australian law).