Police in Michigan say a startling discovery was made on the roof of a Michigan grocery store: A woman was living inside the store sign for roughly a year.
The bar for trespass is met only if the perpetrator has been “forbidden” from accessing the property by the owner. This does not have to be in person, or verbal. A “keep out” or “no trespassing” sign would suffice, and this is why such things exist. In this case I would be immensely surprised if there weren’t some kind of employees only, authorized personnel only, or keep out sign posted on whatever method of ingress was used to reach the inside of the sign.
The intent of this is clear, it’s so nobody can get done for merely setting foot on a property in some situation where they didn’t realize they’d left public right of way or a property where they had authorization to be. You have to tell the person to GTFO (either preemptively or upon discovery) and if they don’t, then they can be arrested.
Ohh, my bad. Y’all mean like “given notice”, not like “disturbing the owner”. I read that too fast.
Common law is still valid in every state in the US (except maybe Louisiana), although obviously statutory law usually overrides it. You’re right that there’s no federal common law since Erie v. Tompkins though.
And I agree with your analysis of that statute. That is interesting too, since my state, Illinois, does not require explicitly being forbidden by the owner. It’s much more in line with the common law idea of trespassing as simply being going somewhere without authority, express or implied.
“Common law” has no relevance to state law matters in the US (nor Federal, for that matter). Here is the relevant statute in this case:
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-750-552
The bar for trespass is met only if the perpetrator has been “forbidden” from accessing the property by the owner. This does not have to be in person, or verbal. A “keep out” or “no trespassing” sign would suffice, and this is why such things exist. In this case I would be immensely surprised if there weren’t some kind of employees only, authorized personnel only, or keep out sign posted on whatever method of ingress was used to reach the inside of the sign.
The intent of this is clear, it’s so nobody can get done for merely setting foot on a property in some situation where they didn’t realize they’d left public right of way or a property where they had authorization to be. You have to tell the person to GTFO (either preemptively or upon discovery) and if they don’t, then they can be arrested.
Ohh, my bad. Y’all mean like “given notice”, not like “disturbing the owner”. I read that too fast.
Common law is still valid in every state in the US (except maybe Louisiana), although obviously statutory law usually overrides it. You’re right that there’s no federal common law since Erie v. Tompkins though.
And I agree with your analysis of that statute. That is interesting too, since my state, Illinois, does not require explicitly being forbidden by the owner. It’s much more in line with the common law idea of trespassing as simply being going somewhere without authority, express or implied.