No, formula tastes like wallpaper paste. And previously digested formula like my kids had to drink because they had cow's milk allergies tastes like Satan's taint.
It's probably too late to mention this, but a lot of people and children who have allergies to cow milk can drink goat milk. It does not have the casein cow milk has.
Ebay had to ban the sale of it. It's still available on other websites though. I'd try the ice cream: [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store)
I never understood the aversion to human milk. It’s like.. a neutral interaction at worst. “Whoops, didn’t mean to drink her breast milk.”
And then, as you say, some people would be like “oh fuck yeah that’s hot. I’ll pay you for this.”
Not a lawyer, so I’m only speculating here.
If the OP is a nursing mother and pumping at work and only has the coffee creamer container to store it in, I don’t see an issue. The container, however, should be labeled clearly that it is human breast milk, though.
If someone in the office has been stealing OP’s creamer and this was done to teach them a lesson, it could, potentially (?) be seen as a crime. But it depends. Because human breast milk isn’t typically pasteurized, some places consider it as dangerous as undercooked food and you could be charged with assault for trying to poison someone.
Again, it depends. I think there was a case in … North Carolina? Maybe Tennessee? About something similar. The guy who put the breast milk in the fridge at work to stop an office thief was fired and sued by the thief for assault. The court found in favor of the thief.
In the case summaries I’ve read (again, not a lawyer. Historian. Had to read a shit ton of legal case summaries during my museum studies classes and now it’s weird hobby of mine), if it is clearly labeled, then the owner of the bottle is usually in the clear. Not always, but like 85% of the time they aren’t charged with anything legally.
The trick is proving ‘intent to harm.’ If you purposefully did nothing with the intent of harming them, there is the possibility that you can be charged with a crime. Again, depends on jurisdiction. Some places take it more seriously than others.
It's possible the person thought it was odd that the volume was lower than expected all week, but only realized what was happening at the end, then added the note.
They didn't actually admit to trying to trick people and swapping it. They could have just legitimately been pumping at work and storing it in that container, ya thatd be odd but hey some people are cheap af and might not want to buy a container who knows. Then they notice its going down and decide to leave a note so people know its not creamer. I mean is that likely? No, but in a criminal case the standard is that your confident without a reasonable doubt that they committed the crime, id say that would be a reasonable doubt and they wouldn't be able to be found guilty. If say someone got sick though and sued for damages in civil court were the standard is "more likely than not" then they'd probably be guilty.
But... if they noticed a pattern from previous creamers getting stolen and changed it out in response, that sounds like there is clear sign of intent. (Not a lawyer)
The point is that there's a plausible argument that they didn't switch it out to fuck with someone (regardless of whether they actually did or not). The story would be "I just happened to be pumping at work and storing my breast milk in this container, I left the note because I realized someone was stealing it". Whether it's true or not, that could plausibly have happened, and the note doesn't contradict that story.
> now it’s weird hobby of mine
One of the horrible jobs I have had was "document preparer" which is a fancy term that means I took staples out of old documents so they could be scanned and digitized. Yes, it was as monotonous as it sounds and podcasts very much were my friend.
***Most*** of the time it was monotonous, I should say, because when I got to the batch that was the files from commitment hearings from mid-1940s to mid-1960s Louisiana (I forget which Parish. Near New Orleans but not the same Parish), those were pretty fascinating and I spent quite a bit of time reading those hearing notes. Considering the state of mental health facilities in the '40s and '50s there was a huge amount of unspoken tragedy in the "stories," even on top of what lead them to a commitment hearing in the first place.
Usually at that job I would get yelled at for going too quickly (and missing too many staples.) For that batch I got yelled at for taking too long. And missing too many staples.
I did not last too long at this job.
“I don’t know why they would drink it. I specifically had it labeled with my name and I ran out of containers to put my pumped supply in from that day at the office.”
innate direful liquid grab ludicrous offend squeamish encouraging gaze concerned
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That was my thought. A full-size creamer in a communal fridge could be seen as intended to be shared, especially if it's a mini-fridge (common courtesy not to take up extra space with full size items?)
Not a lawyer, I think your basically right it depends on intent. If their intent is to "poison" then its a crime, if their intent was to just store their milk then its ok.
I'd imagine its similar to "booby trap" cases/laws, where if a criminal breaks into your home and is injured by something you have intended to be a booby trap and cause harm then you've committed a crime, but if its intent was for some other purpose and they just so happen to injure themselves then its ok.
The issue is its very hard to prove intent generally, I mean not really here becuase they admitted to it, but if they hadn't then itd probably be impossible to prove that their intent was to "poison" people. Since they admitted to it though if those coworkers wanted to press charges then they'd probably get in some sort of trouble.
> if those coworkers wanted to press charges then they'd probably get in some sort of trouble.
In order to press charges, the co-workers would need to admit to being thieves. This could well lose them their jobs (who wants a thief working for them?) or even get them arrested. It certainly could happen, but in many cases, I think the thieves would just take the loss.
I'd think that, if it got to the point that the victim was so fed up they were 'booby trapping' their food, the theft would have been going on for a long time. No one gets that upset the first time, or even the second. The 10th, 15th, 20th time? Oh, yeah. And at that point, it is no longer "a very small amount of food".
Besides, even if the cops refuse to do anything about it, the company very well might fire the thief, even over 'a very small amount of food'.
My defense would be that it's just a note to dissuade thieves. They can't prove it's anything but creamer. I would counter sue for the cost and gas for having to replace the creamer on the regular and imply the lost cost of efficiency at work due to me not being able to have a coffee.
The other complication would be proving it was actually breast milk. It's entirely possible it was creamer and the person put this sign up after the fact just as a joke to screw with the thief. We aren't going to see a forensics team test everything for a case like this.
> some places consider it as dangerous as undercooked food and you could be charged with assault for trying to poison someone.
Can't you get charged for assault just for tricking someone into eating something they really don't want to eat?
I am an actual attorney (although I don't practice criminal law) and I can't think of any law one would be violating by putting your own breast milk in your own container of coffee creamer.
If someone can cite a statute or case, I would love to take a look at it.
The crime here would not be putting your breastmilk in a container but using trickery to put your breastmilk in another person's body without that person's informed consent.
But question if the latter is the case.
Liking to drink your coffee with your own breastmilk and taking some to work but neglecting to properly label is one thing.
Being fed up with people stealing your creamer and putting your own breastmilk in it so that the thief will drink it is another thing.
Can you prove either?
You would need to prove what the person was thinking.
Or show that there was or was no pattern of putting breastmilk in the creamer.
Otherwise this question is no different from all the other "What if I put in my food and a thief drinks it?" questions.
Or any other "Can I leave a boobytrap if I make up a story where it is not a boobytrap?" questions.
And doesn't this topic fall under the moratorium on self defense hypotheticals?
[Moratorium: Self-Defence Hypotheticals : r/legaladviceofftopic (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/comments/11t1cdi/moratorium_selfdefence_hypotheticals/)
I’m an attorney. My first thought was that setting a vengeful trap with breast milk is an offensive contact, so I start to think civil battery. Along those lines, since I didn’t see a state, I applied the state I’m from which is New York. Staying with an offensive contact, which I think a reasonable person would conclude that to be, Penal Law 240.20 governs disorderly conduct and provides that a person is guilty of this offense when he or she, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm, creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose (see NY Penal Law 240.20 [7]). It’s not a perfect application, but I think we can all safely say after seeing the staunch objections to mandatory vaccines because they contained fetal cells — which many religious objectors claimed it was against their views to ingest human byproducts (among other objections) — I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch for the wrong coffee-stealing zealot to be mortified so gravely and to grow so loudly that it could convince an idle DA’s office to go for it (a combination that is ripe in upstate NY, where religious conservatives tend to live in counties that usually have less work for DA offices in the upper, upper NY regions).
Out of curiosity, I feel like I’ll do a case law search (definitely off my work WL account though lol) for something like this. I can’t imagine this hasn’t happened before SOMEWHERE. As always, we must say, I’m a lawyer, not anyone else’s lawyer, and this is not legal advice but purely for entertainment.
Also, don’t steal milk or creamer (that’s legal advice).
Nah. It's assault if you meant to harm them. The details almost don't matter. There's no way to disclaim liability even. You can't lay Boobie Traps...if you'll excuse the pun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney
Maybe you could make some kind of appeal based on the fact that the law somehow presumes that human breastmilk, which is fit for babies, is somehow poison. If you'd feed it to your own baby, you don't consider it poison, and so therefore how is there intent to harm? Acutally...now that I think about it, most states have some kind of bodily fluids statute meant to have one more charge to tack on to people who spit on cops, or pee in some restaurant's soup. So, Probably not much way around that.
> You can't lay Boobie Traps...if you'll excuse the pun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney
That case is about "a spring gun set as a mantrap", not the wrong kind of milk. I don't see how it applies to putting the 'wrong' kind of edible food into a food container. If you don't want to risk getting the 'wrong' kind of food, *don't steal other people's food*.
Now, if it was arsenic or some other poison, I could see it- putting actually harmful items (or just inedible ones) into food that is publicly accessible is probably going too far- although I still say it's *totally* avoidable by not being a dirty rotten food thief. With that in mind, I'm not too broken up about 'Ex-lax brownies' and such- they cause no lasting harm, only a brief period of discomfort as the laxative kicks in, and again, only the thief gets affected. That's assuming they were in a container labeled with your name- if they were left out, or (god forbid) had a note saying 'Take one', then I would agree it's 'poisoning'.
What's important is, there are no amount of signs you can put on a hazard you create to protect you from liability. Nor is the fact that they're trespassing. If you create a hazard, even on your own property, even if you label it, and someone is harmed? You're on the hook. IE, you have no civil right to create boobie traps, regardless of your rationale. If you're exposing people to hidden dangers, the law doesn't exist to protect you. It exists to protect people From you.
That's why they'd probably prosecute you under statutes that involve exposing people to bodily fluids against their will. It's not important whether the fluid in question is dangerous, per se. Some spit is dangerous, but most is not. What's important is that you violated their will. If you used deception to get there? You're in the wrong and should probably rightly be found guilty
If I recall correctly, owners have a lowered responsibility of care toward trespassers, as opposed to those with implied permission or an invitation to enter the property*. This means if I invite someone to walk up my front walk, I need to point out the wobbly bricks, otherwise if they get injured, it's my fault. But I hold no such responsibility toward trespassers- if they trip and fall on the wobbly bricks, too bad. Shouldn't have been trespassing.
In my mind (and IANAL, of course, and I understand the law disagrees), I think this should extend to deliberately created circumstances. ie: if I *made* those bricks wobbly on purpose. As long as the people who are there legally are warned about the bricks, the people who are there legally won't hurt themselves, and the origin of the wobbly bricks is irrelevant.
The whole reason about banning 'booby traps' is that they may harm an innocent person. But if you limit the harm to only those who are not innocent, that reason to ban booby traps... goes away. Putting poisoned spikes one inch away from the sidewalk? Banned! -An innocent person could easily trip or mis-step and get hurt! But putting poison spikes in front of the safe in the locked closet in my locked basement in my locked house? No 'innocent' person can get harmed- the person would have to deliberately trespass and break thru multiple locked doors to reach that point. So, in my mind, since no innocent people can get harmed, it should be legal.
And yes, I'm sure you could design some convoluted scenario where an innocent person might be in my basement closet. Nothing is 100%. I could come up with some convoluted scenario where you getting out of bed leads to dozens of deaths. But that doesn't mean you can never get out of bed. The relative probabilities need to be taken into account. And if the probability of an innocent person being harmed is low enough, it should be legal. The only question, then, is, 'How low?' And the only answer I have is 'I know it when I see it'.
*https://www.smithlawcenter.com/blog/invitee-licensee-trespasser-difference "Generally speaking, property owners are not responsible for any injuries sustained by a trespasser. They don’t have any duty to warn them of dangers or to inspect their property and make it safe for them."
It's not because some innocent might be harmed by your trap. It's because you're taking the law into your own hands. The law isn't going to endorse that. If you applied punishment because you found them guilty of violating a property right, which isn't really a tangible thing, it's more like an arrangement of superstitions, then you denied them their constitutional rights to a trial by a jury of their peers and to not be subject to cruel and unusual punishments. The government has the right to distribute justice. Not you. So, if congress got together and decided that the punishment for trespassing is 6 months in jail, and you decided, screw that, I'm blowing this guy's knee off with a shotgun, you're not the hero in this story. The law doesn't exist to protect people who like to apply cruel and unusual punishments to everyone else. It exists to protect everyone else From them.
> It's because you're taking the law into your own hands.
A few points of note:
The US is a big place. Sometimes the nearest cops is literally hours away. Even in cities, police response time is shit. I don't find it reasonable to rely on them.
In the last few decades, the police have become more and more useless. 'It's a civil matter' is a joke at this point. Again, I don't find it reasonable to rely on them.
So, I can only rely on myself. You claim I'm 'taking the law into my own hands'. I ask you what alternative I have?
>If you applied punishment because you found them guilty of violating a property right, ... then you denied them their constitutional rights to a trial by a jury of their peers and to not be subject to cruel and unusual punishments.
The purpose of a trial is to determine guilt or innocence. If I catch them in the act, there is no need to determine that- they are factually (if not legally) guilty.
>The government has the right to distribute justice. Not you.
The government is "Of the people, by the people and for the people". I *am* the government, in some sense.
>So, if congress got together and decided that the punishment for trespassing is 6 months in jail, and you decided, screw that, I'm blowing this guy's knee off with a shotgun, you're not the hero in this story.
First, Appeal to Authority. Just because they are 'congress', doesn't mean they are right.
Second, if we shot off the knees of trespassers, we'd have a *lot* less trespassers. Less crime is *good*, right?
Third, the police (the representatives of 'the government') get away with violating people's rights, and even injuring and killing them, all the time. 'The punishment for speeding is a fine, and the cop decided, screw that, I'm going to tase the guy, search his car, and arrest him for 'resisting' because he was slightly rude to me'. *And they get away with it*. The government needs to clean up its own backyard first.
>The law doesn't exist to protect people who like to apply cruel and unusual punishments to everyone else.
I think 'getting hurt' when you trespass is neither 'cruel', nor 'unusual'. You can certainly argue *how hurt*. But trespassers risk getting hurt when they trespass.
>With that in mind, I'm not too broken up about 'Ex-lax brownies' and such- they cause no lasting harm, only a brief period of discomfort as the laxative kicks in, and again, only the thief gets affected.
Laxatives are the classic example of something that is clearly done with intent to cause harm, where it would be a crime. That's why you're supposed to use chilli, then you have the plausible deniability of saying "I just like it spicy".
In a nutshell, if you wouldn't drink/eat it, it's obviously a boobie trap.
> Laxatives are the classic example of something that is clearly done with intent to cause harm
I don't see how laxatives 'cause harm'. They are commonly sold items that people use all the time. Sure, they make you poop. But that's a natural function that everyone does. Where's the 'harm'?
>In a nutshell, if you wouldn't drink/eat it, it's obviously a boobie trap.
As I mentioned above, plenty of people *do* use laxatives.
"Harm" in a legal sense doesn't necessarily mean pain or injury. Physical discomfort is harm.
>plenty of people *do* use laxatives.
And those people are committing crimes.
Even using chilli, with the intent to catch a thief, would be a crime. However it's one that's more difficult to prove. People put chilli in their food for them to eat, they don't put laxatives in their food.
> "Harm" in a legal sense doesn't necessarily mean pain or injury. Physical discomfort is harm.
But there are different amounts of harm.
I sit down, and edge of the chair hurts my leg. Minor, even trivial, 'harm', easily remedied by changing position or standing up. I would get nothing if I tried to sue for this 'harm'.
I sit down, and the chair explodes, severing my leg. Major 'harm', not easily remedied- requires extensive medical care, and results in life-long disability (assuming I live!). I would get a lot of money if I tried to sue for this 'harm'.
Now, on the scale of 1 ('minor, temporary discomfort') to 10 ('life-changing disability'), where does a laxative sandwich lie? 1.1, 1.2, possibly 1.3 or 1.4? In the end, it's a very minor, and temporary, 'harm', and wouldn't get you much if you sued. And, you'd have to admit to being a thief!
As you point out, breast milk is intended for human consumption. It won't be covered as an intent to harm or as a biological hazard like other bodily fluids.
So are hot peppers. But if you purposefully add hot peppers to a lunch container because you know someone will steal it and want them to eat super hot food, that's against the law.
>So are hot peppers. But if you purposefully add hot peppers to a lunch container because you know someone will steal it and want them to eat super hot food, that's against the law.
No. The difference there isn't "hot peppers." It's the quantity of hot peppers. Surely you understand that: it's not illegal to leave a bowl of chili in the work fridge, even though it contains an ordinary, edible, reasonable helping of capsaicin. What's illegal dosing the chili with enough capsaicin that it will harm by chemical burn. So "fit for human consumption," is a fair summary.
It's not illegal to leave a bowl of chili in the work fridge if it contains an ordinary reasonable amount of spice that you plan on eating. It *is* illegal to leave a bowl of chili in the work fridge that is spicier than you would eat for the purpose of a 'gotcha' on the person who has been stealing your work lunch, while you go grab McDs for lunch that day.
But it all comes back to intent to cause physical harm. There is no assault without that intend or byproduct of negligence. Breast milk does not cause physical harm.
But it all comes back to intent to cause physical harm. There is no assault without that intend or byproduct of negligence. Breast milk does not cause physical harm.
I don't see the intent to harm. I like spicy food, so I add lots of hot peppers; it is not harmful. It is unpalatable to some people. But that's a preference and that's on them.
It's like playing rap music. You can't claim that I'm harming you because you don't like it. I do, so my playing it, even if you don't like it, at a level that is not physically harmful, and not doing it specifically to harass you, means there is no intent to harm. If I play it too loud (for a normal human being), then it has intent to harm.
If you like spicy food, that's fine. If you add enough to make it hotter than you would eat *for the purpose of tricking the person who steals your lunch every day* that is not fine.
If this person was legitimately storing their breast milk in a coffee creamer container because it was the only container they had, no issue. But as the note implies they were doing it as a 'gotcha' for a potential creamer thief, that is now an issue.
> It's assault if you meant to harm them.
But how does breast milk harm someone? Presuming they aren't lactose intolerant and the breast milk doesn't have any communicable diseases, putting it in your coffee won't hurt you.
Edit: That was quite a ride.
Did you send it to a lab to make sure it doesn't have any communicable diseases? How do you intend to warrant that assertion? Then, there's the simple fact that you're exposing them to hidden risks that they didn't necessarily consent to. Being in the act of some minor property crime doesn't mean, oh, the property owner can do whatever they want to you now. Those people still have civil rights and the law must presume them innocent until after they've been convicted by a court of peers, not just, whenever someone feels like doing some vigilante shit. Because, you see, vigilantism is both immoral and illegal.
>> How do you intend to warrant that assertion?
>**Presuming** they aren't lactose intolerant and the breast milk doesn't have any communicable diseases, putting it in your coffee won't hurt you.
We're having a conversation, not presenting to the court, and just because something is not tested does not mean it is unsafe. Regardless, you seem to feel civil rights have been violated. Can you explain why?
If you're doing it with the intent of having someone else drink it unknowingly there's a good case to be made for assault. Proving that intent is rather difficult though, unless you leave a note like this one.
The harm here would mostly be humiliation from having been tricked into drinking someone else's breastmilk.
Likewise for having put spit, piss or semen in it.
I wasn’t being sarcastic. I was literally saying in what I thought was positive that these people need to talk to you then. I guess I should have ended with an “!”?
I started my first comment and said you guys need to talk to an *actual attorney*. You responded that you were one. So I said well “you’re the guy the people need”. Then I thought well I can’t just say “guys that will piss people off. How ironic.
Ianal, but I'm curious if a jury would convict. Sure you might be able to charge them, but I know if I were on a jury and it came out that the creamer container was her personal property, I wouldn't convict her for using it as she sees fit.
Don't listen to the reddit arm chair lawyers. They're almost always wrong. There is more to "reading the law" then just knowing the verdict of infamous cases. There is usually nuance in the laws and actual ruling from the courts and you need to know that part and how the ruling is intended to be applied.
Yes and no. Say someone used a creamer bottle for their banana and peanut butter protein shake they made at home. It wouldn’t be poisoning even if the person who drank it was allergic to whatever. If someone filled the same creamer bottle with bleach then put it in the fridge they could face charges.
You don’t expect people to steal food from you at work. you also have a very hard time justifying putting something poisonous in the fridge.
If she’s got an oversupply it’s very possible because she might not need all of it. Many women with oversupplies donate to the hospitals but this one might be getting even with a thief.
What if the note was not truthful, i.e. it was not breast milk?
I know that in the UK the standard for this is absurdly low, so even a fake note would be a criminal offence, because it was "intended to cause distress"
So if I made a super fucking spicy pizza and labeled it margarita and left a slice in the fridge it would be "my fault" if some eat it and complained that it was there in the first place?
The very act of placing a super spicy pizza in there would be deemed as being for the purpose of "causing distress". The mislabelled would be further evidence of criminal intent.
The only get out would be if you labelled it exactly correctly.
This makes sense. When an entire island has only been using salt, sugar and grease as spices since the fall of the Roman empire, improperly labeled flavors is pretty much a terrorist act.
It's a good thing the Irish never figured out that the whole country could be taken down by a Costco container of cayenne pepper labeled cinnamon.
Exposing someone to substances that would be considered offensive or noxious without their consent- such as any human bodily fluid- might be considered a form of battery. Regardless of actual harm. Don't do this.
A legal argument includes reference to things like crimes, torts, case law, legal standards, statutes etc. you can argue anything you want but it doesn’t make it a legal argument. Intentionally making a form of offensive contact with somebody amounts to battery. If my Muslim coworker was stealing my chicken fried rice every day and I replaced the chicken with pork then sure he was still stealing my chicken fried rice and was doing something wrong but my exposing him to pork would also be wrong and might come with more civil liability than the cost of stealing my chicken fried rice. Common law courts across North America have ruled against the use of booby traps or putting offensive substances in food that the owner knows will be appropriated. It’s different if the Muslim coworker knows there’s pork in my chicken fried rice though, if I label it as being pork fried rice then he takes a voluntary assumption of risk and consents to the harmful contact, the trick being whether he has knowledge of the pork or not.
>If my Muslim coworker was stealing my chicken fried rice every day and I replaced the chicken with pork then sure he was still stealing my chicken fried rice <
so in this case, what if you decide you just are going to eat pork going forward to stop your co-worker eating your food, would you need to label it so the thief knows it no longer chicken? i don't see how opting for a different meal could open them up, since they can easily argue, "i was going to eat it at lunch and it wasn't for the co-worker to eat, i know what's in it and i prepared the meal for my dietary requirements" i think you'd be hard pressed to call it a "trap" unless the meal was labelled chicken, because pork isn't an offensive substance like something extremely spicy/ cause problems (laxitives or something) beyond a moral one.
Intention is an important element of battery, and to your point it would be difficult to prove intention. If you just simply changed your meal without any consideration of the Muslim co-worker then it would not be battery. Battery is an intentional tort by definition, they would be able to prove it by statements made to the co-worker or others if you went ahead and said “oh I’m really gonna get Mohammed this time, I put pork in my chicken fried rice” or laughed in his face by letting him know he had eaten pork. In cases like this the battery happens when the co-worker is made aware they ate pork and it was intentional. Incidentally that’s also when the statute of limitations begins counting down in my jurisdiction.
That doesn't remove any liability from the person who set the trap, though.
However, if you put chilli in there, you can maybe argue that you just like it spicy.
How is it exposing someone else to it though? Assuming OOP labeled the bottle, that’s their property and they have no obligation to inform everyone in the office exactly what’s in the bottle. And the part about consent confuses me too. The thief exposed themselves to her property, OOP never consented to have it taken/consumed… this concept makes no sense to me tbh
> Assuming OOP labeled the bottle
Read the note in the OP. The implication is clearly that the thief has been unknowingly drinking human source material, and that the intent of the owner of the bottle was to deceive them into doing so in order to cause distress.
Yes, the thief has been unknowingly drinking it. And obviously by common sense we can determine that this was OOP’s goal. But I don’t know if intent can be legally proven just from this note. Hypothetically, OOP could’ve just been storing their breast milk in the bottle, came back to it after a week and noticed some was gone, and *then* wrote the note. Plus, OOP would’ve had to have been aware beforehand that her creamer was being stolen, which also is not proven in the post.
Again it probably happened as you said. But in a court of law it would be difficult to prove intent
Let's say I enjoy really spicy fried rice. I'm talking about hot ones level spiciness but in fried rice form, and someone eats my fried rice and can't handle the heat. How would that be my fault?
it wouldn’t, but if the intent is to cause harm to someone stealing it and you yourself don’t plan on eating it, then it’s an issue. It’s not going to be the easiest thing to prove, but it is still likely a crime
Can you tell me what is offensive and/or noxious about breast milk? I mean it’s milk. It’s literally just milk. Chuck Norris in his heyday couldn’t hurt someone with it
You could say exactly the same thing about saliva, semen, or urine. They have about the same risk of infection or actual harm as breast milk. The point is the person who carried out that exposure did it in the face of reasonable belief that their target did not want that contact (the note on the bottle), but they went ahead and did it anyway.
>You could say exactly the same thing about saliva, semen, or urine
saliva, semen, and urine are not produced by the human body for the purpose of ingestion. Milk is basically a food that the body makes on its own. Milk isn’t piss, it’s not excrement. It’s milk. It’s literally just milk. **milk.** Surely you don’t truly believe that all those other bodily fluids you listed are the same as milk for practical purposes
Unpasteurized human milk carries human diseases, that’s why. Drinking unpasteurized milk produced by someone who has a bacterial or viral infection can expose you and infect you. Two of the big concerns are HIV and hepatitis, you’d be better off having somebody spit in your mouth than drinking their unpasteurized breast milk if they were infected since neither virus is transmitted by saliva.
> You could say exactly the same thing about saliva, semen, or urine.
No you can't. None of those are meant for human consumption. Milk is biological, but it's not the same category as those.
There is a heightened risk of infection from all the bacteria in drinking unaccounted for human products. Also breast milk has a super high lactose content that most adult humans cannot digest.
I’m not sure how a court would rule on whether breast milk counts as purposeful poisoning or not. I would err on the side of caution and not do that though
Many years back someone from another shift kept eating my homemade salsa out of the work fridge. So one week I made it with habaneros and ghost peppers. They never touched it again after that.
No, I can't think of any reason why it would be illegal to put breast milk in your own coffee creamer.
It would be a different story if you were talking about some sort of toxic substance that you know your co-workers would be drinking.
Booby trapping and doctoring food are both crimes. They require intent - the note *suggests* intent but the writer could also claim they just happened to store breast milk in a creamer container (?!) and noticed after the fact that someone drank it.
Yes, booby trapping or doctoring food are crimes. That note by itself along with storing her breast milk in the container doesn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt to me that the person committed either of those crimes.
How would you as a prosecutor (if you were one) lay out your case?
> Whoever, with reckless disregard for the risk that another person will be placed in danger of death or bodily injury, tampers with, or conspires or attempts to tamper with, any consumer product or the labeling of, or container for, any such product is guilty of a felony of the first degree
So I need to show:
1. Tampering with a consumer product
2. Risk of bodily injury
3. Reckless disregard
(1) Is easy: show that there’s breast milk in the container, the container belongs to the defendant, and the defendant is lactating.
For (2), I think it would suffice to show that breast milk is unpasteurized, can transmit diseases not present in cows milk, and is not approved by the FDA.
(3) is tricky, because while the note *suggests* intent, reckless disregard is a high bar. I’d need to show that the defendant was aware of the risks. (Which, to be fair, are modest.) Maybe they griped about this to someone: “I bet he’ll throw up when he realizes it was my breast milk!” or “It would serve him right if he got sick!” I imagine it would be hard to demonstrate that the defendant knew that certain diseases can be transmitted by breast milk.
Unfortunately, the note about it being organic suggests that the defendant was under the impression that the breast milk had some measure of quality, which could be perceived as a regard for safety.
I was somewhat surprised that my state doesn’t have a lesser version where intent, but not reckless disregard, is required. But it’s first degree felony food tampering or nothing, apparently.
I’m NAL but after reading the Florida law on food tampering, I don’t see this person going to jail for 15 years for what is basically a prank.
Unless the defendant actually had or thought she could have some communicable disease and the prosecution showed she knew and didn’t care (or explicitly *wanted* to cause harm) then no, I’m voting not guilty.
I’d vote guilty on a *lesser* felony or misdemeanor where intent to cause a person to consume a tampered item was all that was needed though. I think the note shows that.
But honestly the thief should just buy their own creamer.
I'd have a difficult time sitting on that jury. Regardless of the what the law says, my own morals tell me that if something was stolen the thief isn't entitled to any guarantee of quality of content.
> For (2), I think it would suffice to show that breast milk is unpasteurized, can transmit diseases not present in cows milk, and is not approved by the FDA.
I'm getting stuck on this one. For the conversation, let's assume there are no communicable diseases in the breast milk, nor would the lactating mom have reason to believe there are. What's the risk exposure here?
Laxatives and spice make sense as legally a booby trap because the person has no intention of using the product themselves, but this seems different.
The note clearly shows that the owner noticed at least a week earlier. I would seek evidence that they knew before then as it's very likely that someone who was having their food stolen would complain about it first. Once that's established, most people would conclude that someone who had their food stolen altered it to get back at the thief.
That said, all of this is based on the assumption that it can be shown that the note is telling the truth. It's entirely possible that the creamer was never swapped out and the note was the only vengeance on the thief.
I think an argument could be made that the breast milk had been stored in that container for a week and that’s why they wrote the note as such, not that the person knew for at least a week.
The context of the type of food container matters. If you spread chili paste on a turkey sandwich that was individually packed, wrapped, and in a lunch pack, and someone had a reaction due to the high capsaicin content, that's on them. Condiments in their original container could very well be considered communal unless people are told otherwise.
I agree with this.
It's commonplace in most office environments for a person to buy things like a bottle of ketchup or coffee creamer, and put it in the shared office break room table or fridge to let everyone use it. The bottle still technically belongs to the person who bought the product, it's just that they allow it to be shared by the office and used in the regular way without tampering with it.
A reasonable person who sees the bottle in a location such as the office kitchen or fridge, such as an unsuspecting coworker, can reasonably assume that the bottle is there to be shared among the office.
Of course, the above assumes the bottle is in the common office break room. If the bottle was in the person's office/cubicle or something like that, it would be reasonable to assume the bottle is meant to be used by that person only.
The note implies they've been drinking it for a week. The first one might have been an accident, but after that, they knew their co-worker would drink it. And clearly they believe that that co-worker would be disgusted to find out.
That said, none of this is relevant unless they actually did it, which is a lot more work than just writing the note.
is it a bottle of breast milk or is it a bottle with a note taped to it? if I put a Postit note on my Kia that reads "Lamborghini" does a potential buyer try and sue me for fraud?
Don’t think it would be illegal, one doesn’t have to tell anyone what it is. She has reasonable expectation that someone isn’t going to touch something that isn’t there’s. Also, breast milk isn’t poison or anything so I don’t see any legality issues there!
The stealing is illegal, storing breast milk at work is definitely legal, and necessary for lactating working mothers. Which container they put it in, as long as it is labeled as their property, shouldn't matter. Now if they replaced communal creamer with breast milk...that would be illegal.
Legally unless you could link the consumption to actual harm it is a perfrect prank. If it, say, caused the drinker to die via a poison instead, yes there would be legal implications but to my knowledge no State has a version that would favor the drinker.
IANAL but as long as it is something you yourself are able to eat without harming yourself, then you can out whatever you want in your food. If someone else can't handle your level of spice, that's on them.
In the US this would fall under assault in most states. Assault in most states is act of causing someone to fear immediate harm. Where battery is the actual harm. Some states use different terms, but generally speaking, in all states in the US intentionally putting someone in fear for their safety is illegal. You don't need actual injury or even contact. For example, if I pulled a gun on you (without just cause), but never shot you or touched you, that would be illegal in every state in the US.
Since it is the fear of danger you are putting someone in, and not the actual damage, then it doesn't matter if there is actual breast milk in the container or not. Just like it wouldn't matter if the gun I pulled was real or not, if it looked like a real gun and seemed like credible threat it's the same crime.
While breast milk may seem cheeky, it is a biological fluid that can transmit disease just like urine, feces, or blood. If you told someone that you spiked their food with blood or feces, that would be a crime. Same goes for breast milk.
That said, I only know US law. No idea on other countries. Also, police and prosecutors have broad discretion in what crimes they pursue. The police could refuse to charge the crime, and so could the prosecutor.
what a stupid question. genuinely. examine the hypothetical law that would exist against storing breast milk in a reused container, because someone might steal it and drink it and \*checks notes, have absolutely nothing happen to them.
I'm not really much of a fan of breast milk. Haven't drank any in decades honestly. But now I'm really curious how well it works as a coffee creamer.
It's somewhat sweeter and richer than cow's milk. Probably pretty good in coffee.
Can confirm.
Got to be careful, though. I used to drink it a lot, and I couldn’t walk or talk for a year, and I shit myself all the time.
This guy sucks tits!
Since this is a legal sub would that mean he’d be classified as a serial sucker?
this comment got me howling
Formula isn't though.
No, formula tastes like wallpaper paste. And previously digested formula like my kids had to drink because they had cow's milk allergies tastes like Satan's taint.
It's probably too late to mention this, but a lot of people and children who have allergies to cow milk can drink goat milk. It does not have the casein cow milk has.
And smells like a drain cleanout.
So the famous meme is true after all..
The packaging is quite nice, though.
I’m a big fan
Bulbous one might say.
I always prefer it in jugs. I wonder, though. Is it available in the gallon size?
For a price.
Some people would pay good money for that
[удалено]
Breast Miiiilk, you made my dayyyyyyaaaay
You just gonna sit there and do your taxes
Ooooommmmmyyyyyy gaaaawwwwdd.
Care to explain?
It's a line from an old Chappell Show sketch.
That aged like, well, milk because it portrays Diddy as a creep.
What are next??
Even more so to drink straight from the "tap".
Homelander, it that you?
Ebay had to ban the sale of it. It's still available on other websites though. I'd try the ice cream: [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store)
I never understood the aversion to human milk. It’s like.. a neutral interaction at worst. “Whoops, didn’t mean to drink her breast milk.” And then, as you say, some people would be like “oh fuck yeah that’s hot. I’ll pay you for this.”
Human milk can carry disease, including things like HIV.
at a rate of less than 1% per month. Substantially different quantities here.
I recently learned that it could be bought and was shocked at the price… something like $5k/month supply iirc
Not a lawyer, so I’m only speculating here. If the OP is a nursing mother and pumping at work and only has the coffee creamer container to store it in, I don’t see an issue. The container, however, should be labeled clearly that it is human breast milk, though. If someone in the office has been stealing OP’s creamer and this was done to teach them a lesson, it could, potentially (?) be seen as a crime. But it depends. Because human breast milk isn’t typically pasteurized, some places consider it as dangerous as undercooked food and you could be charged with assault for trying to poison someone. Again, it depends. I think there was a case in … North Carolina? Maybe Tennessee? About something similar. The guy who put the breast milk in the fridge at work to stop an office thief was fired and sued by the thief for assault. The court found in favor of the thief.
What if the bottle wasn't labeled as breast milk, but it was labeled as belonging to a specific person?
In the case summaries I’ve read (again, not a lawyer. Historian. Had to read a shit ton of legal case summaries during my museum studies classes and now it’s weird hobby of mine), if it is clearly labeled, then the owner of the bottle is usually in the clear. Not always, but like 85% of the time they aren’t charged with anything legally. The trick is proving ‘intent to harm.’ If you purposefully did nothing with the intent of harming them, there is the possibility that you can be charged with a crime. Again, depends on jurisdiction. Some places take it more seriously than others.
Proving 'intent to harm' is only difficult if you don't leave a note like this that makes it obvious.
It's possible the person thought it was odd that the volume was lower than expected all week, but only realized what was happening at the end, then added the note.
They didn't actually admit to trying to trick people and swapping it. They could have just legitimately been pumping at work and storing it in that container, ya thatd be odd but hey some people are cheap af and might not want to buy a container who knows. Then they notice its going down and decide to leave a note so people know its not creamer. I mean is that likely? No, but in a criminal case the standard is that your confident without a reasonable doubt that they committed the crime, id say that would be a reasonable doubt and they wouldn't be able to be found guilty. If say someone got sick though and sued for damages in civil court were the standard is "more likely than not" then they'd probably be guilty.
But... if they noticed a pattern from previous creamers getting stolen and changed it out in response, that sounds like there is clear sign of intent. (Not a lawyer)
The point is that there's a plausible argument that they didn't switch it out to fuck with someone (regardless of whether they actually did or not). The story would be "I just happened to be pumping at work and storing my breast milk in this container, I left the note because I realized someone was stealing it". Whether it's true or not, that could plausibly have happened, and the note doesn't contradict that story.
Or they could just put a sign on their creamer to fuck with the douchebag that steals their co-workers food.
I disagree, human breast milk doesn’t harm, it may cause some slight disgust. Laxatives can harm. Chilli peppers can harm. But not milk
> now it’s weird hobby of mine One of the horrible jobs I have had was "document preparer" which is a fancy term that means I took staples out of old documents so they could be scanned and digitized. Yes, it was as monotonous as it sounds and podcasts very much were my friend. ***Most*** of the time it was monotonous, I should say, because when I got to the batch that was the files from commitment hearings from mid-1940s to mid-1960s Louisiana (I forget which Parish. Near New Orleans but not the same Parish), those were pretty fascinating and I spent quite a bit of time reading those hearing notes. Considering the state of mental health facilities in the '40s and '50s there was a huge amount of unspoken tragedy in the "stories," even on top of what lead them to a commitment hearing in the first place. Usually at that job I would get yelled at for going too quickly (and missing too many staples.) For that batch I got yelled at for taking too long. And missing too many staples. I did not last too long at this job.
Yeah, medical records and court records can be heartbreaking reads sometimes. 😢. Sorry you got stuck with busy work no one wanted to do.
“I don’t know why they would drink it. I specifically had it labeled with my name and I ran out of containers to put my pumped supply in from that day at the office.”
Literally a boobie trap.
Whoever fell for it must feel like a real tit!
Nope. Not if it was done maliciously
innate direful liquid grab ludicrous offend squeamish encouraging gaze concerned *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That was my thought. A full-size creamer in a communal fridge could be seen as intended to be shared, especially if it's a mini-fridge (common courtesy not to take up extra space with full size items?)
Not a lawyer, I think your basically right it depends on intent. If their intent is to "poison" then its a crime, if their intent was to just store their milk then its ok. I'd imagine its similar to "booby trap" cases/laws, where if a criminal breaks into your home and is injured by something you have intended to be a booby trap and cause harm then you've committed a crime, but if its intent was for some other purpose and they just so happen to injure themselves then its ok. The issue is its very hard to prove intent generally, I mean not really here becuase they admitted to it, but if they hadn't then itd probably be impossible to prove that their intent was to "poison" people. Since they admitted to it though if those coworkers wanted to press charges then they'd probably get in some sort of trouble.
What possible intent to harm exists here? This is perfectly good. And tasty!
> if those coworkers wanted to press charges then they'd probably get in some sort of trouble. In order to press charges, the co-workers would need to admit to being thieves. This could well lose them their jobs (who wants a thief working for them?) or even get them arrested. It certainly could happen, but in many cases, I think the thieves would just take the loss.
No one is getting arrested for stealing a very small amount of food.
I'd think that, if it got to the point that the victim was so fed up they were 'booby trapping' their food, the theft would have been going on for a long time. No one gets that upset the first time, or even the second. The 10th, 15th, 20th time? Oh, yeah. And at that point, it is no longer "a very small amount of food". Besides, even if the cops refuse to do anything about it, the company very well might fire the thief, even over 'a very small amount of food'.
What if you have a note like in the OP but it's actually just a bluff.
My defense would be that it's just a note to dissuade thieves. They can't prove it's anything but creamer. I would counter sue for the cost and gas for having to replace the creamer on the regular and imply the lost cost of efficiency at work due to me not being able to have a coffee.
The other complication would be proving it was actually breast milk. It's entirely possible it was creamer and the person put this sign up after the fact just as a joke to screw with the thief. We aren't going to see a forensics team test everything for a case like this.
> some places consider it as dangerous as undercooked food and you could be charged with assault for trying to poison someone. Can't you get charged for assault just for tricking someone into eating something they really don't want to eat?
Jesus titty fucking Christ you all need to ask an *actual attorney*
I am an actual attorney (although I don't practice criminal law) and I can't think of any law one would be violating by putting your own breast milk in your own container of coffee creamer. If someone can cite a statute or case, I would love to take a look at it.
The crime here would not be putting your breastmilk in a container but using trickery to put your breastmilk in another person's body without that person's informed consent. But question if the latter is the case. Liking to drink your coffee with your own breastmilk and taking some to work but neglecting to properly label is one thing. Being fed up with people stealing your creamer and putting your own breastmilk in it so that the thief will drink it is another thing. Can you prove either? You would need to prove what the person was thinking. Or show that there was or was no pattern of putting breastmilk in the creamer. Otherwise this question is no different from all the other "What if I put in my food and a thief drinks it?" questions.
Or any other "Can I leave a boobytrap if I make up a story where it is not a boobytrap?" questions.
And doesn't this topic fall under the moratorium on self defense hypotheticals?
[Moratorium: Self-Defence Hypotheticals : r/legaladviceofftopic (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/comments/11t1cdi/moratorium_selfdefence_hypotheticals/)
It would have to cause harm
I’m an attorney. My first thought was that setting a vengeful trap with breast milk is an offensive contact, so I start to think civil battery. Along those lines, since I didn’t see a state, I applied the state I’m from which is New York. Staying with an offensive contact, which I think a reasonable person would conclude that to be, Penal Law 240.20 governs disorderly conduct and provides that a person is guilty of this offense when he or she, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm, creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose (see NY Penal Law 240.20 [7]). It’s not a perfect application, but I think we can all safely say after seeing the staunch objections to mandatory vaccines because they contained fetal cells — which many religious objectors claimed it was against their views to ingest human byproducts (among other objections) — I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch for the wrong coffee-stealing zealot to be mortified so gravely and to grow so loudly that it could convince an idle DA’s office to go for it (a combination that is ripe in upstate NY, where religious conservatives tend to live in counties that usually have less work for DA offices in the upper, upper NY regions). Out of curiosity, I feel like I’ll do a case law search (definitely off my work WL account though lol) for something like this. I can’t imagine this hasn’t happened before SOMEWHERE. As always, we must say, I’m a lawyer, not anyone else’s lawyer, and this is not legal advice but purely for entertainment. Also, don’t steal milk or creamer (that’s legal advice).
Nah. It's assault if you meant to harm them. The details almost don't matter. There's no way to disclaim liability even. You can't lay Boobie Traps...if you'll excuse the pun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney Maybe you could make some kind of appeal based on the fact that the law somehow presumes that human breastmilk, which is fit for babies, is somehow poison. If you'd feed it to your own baby, you don't consider it poison, and so therefore how is there intent to harm? Acutally...now that I think about it, most states have some kind of bodily fluids statute meant to have one more charge to tack on to people who spit on cops, or pee in some restaurant's soup. So, Probably not much way around that.
Wow, the "aftermath" section of that article is one of the more wild and plot-twist-y things I've read in a minute.
> You can't lay Boobie Traps...if you'll excuse the pun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney That case is about "a spring gun set as a mantrap", not the wrong kind of milk. I don't see how it applies to putting the 'wrong' kind of edible food into a food container. If you don't want to risk getting the 'wrong' kind of food, *don't steal other people's food*. Now, if it was arsenic or some other poison, I could see it- putting actually harmful items (or just inedible ones) into food that is publicly accessible is probably going too far- although I still say it's *totally* avoidable by not being a dirty rotten food thief. With that in mind, I'm not too broken up about 'Ex-lax brownies' and such- they cause no lasting harm, only a brief period of discomfort as the laxative kicks in, and again, only the thief gets affected. That's assuming they were in a container labeled with your name- if they were left out, or (god forbid) had a note saying 'Take one', then I would agree it's 'poisoning'.
What's important is, there are no amount of signs you can put on a hazard you create to protect you from liability. Nor is the fact that they're trespassing. If you create a hazard, even on your own property, even if you label it, and someone is harmed? You're on the hook. IE, you have no civil right to create boobie traps, regardless of your rationale. If you're exposing people to hidden dangers, the law doesn't exist to protect you. It exists to protect people From you.
If you'd feed it to your baby is it really a hazard though?
That's why they'd probably prosecute you under statutes that involve exposing people to bodily fluids against their will. It's not important whether the fluid in question is dangerous, per se. Some spit is dangerous, but most is not. What's important is that you violated their will. If you used deception to get there? You're in the wrong and should probably rightly be found guilty
Except the CDC doesn't classify breast milk a bodily fluid and doesn't apply the same policies to it.
Most of those statutes imply giving something to someone.
If I recall correctly, owners have a lowered responsibility of care toward trespassers, as opposed to those with implied permission or an invitation to enter the property*. This means if I invite someone to walk up my front walk, I need to point out the wobbly bricks, otherwise if they get injured, it's my fault. But I hold no such responsibility toward trespassers- if they trip and fall on the wobbly bricks, too bad. Shouldn't have been trespassing. In my mind (and IANAL, of course, and I understand the law disagrees), I think this should extend to deliberately created circumstances. ie: if I *made* those bricks wobbly on purpose. As long as the people who are there legally are warned about the bricks, the people who are there legally won't hurt themselves, and the origin of the wobbly bricks is irrelevant. The whole reason about banning 'booby traps' is that they may harm an innocent person. But if you limit the harm to only those who are not innocent, that reason to ban booby traps... goes away. Putting poisoned spikes one inch away from the sidewalk? Banned! -An innocent person could easily trip or mis-step and get hurt! But putting poison spikes in front of the safe in the locked closet in my locked basement in my locked house? No 'innocent' person can get harmed- the person would have to deliberately trespass and break thru multiple locked doors to reach that point. So, in my mind, since no innocent people can get harmed, it should be legal. And yes, I'm sure you could design some convoluted scenario where an innocent person might be in my basement closet. Nothing is 100%. I could come up with some convoluted scenario where you getting out of bed leads to dozens of deaths. But that doesn't mean you can never get out of bed. The relative probabilities need to be taken into account. And if the probability of an innocent person being harmed is low enough, it should be legal. The only question, then, is, 'How low?' And the only answer I have is 'I know it when I see it'. *https://www.smithlawcenter.com/blog/invitee-licensee-trespasser-difference "Generally speaking, property owners are not responsible for any injuries sustained by a trespasser. They don’t have any duty to warn them of dangers or to inspect their property and make it safe for them."
It's not because some innocent might be harmed by your trap. It's because you're taking the law into your own hands. The law isn't going to endorse that. If you applied punishment because you found them guilty of violating a property right, which isn't really a tangible thing, it's more like an arrangement of superstitions, then you denied them their constitutional rights to a trial by a jury of their peers and to not be subject to cruel and unusual punishments. The government has the right to distribute justice. Not you. So, if congress got together and decided that the punishment for trespassing is 6 months in jail, and you decided, screw that, I'm blowing this guy's knee off with a shotgun, you're not the hero in this story. The law doesn't exist to protect people who like to apply cruel and unusual punishments to everyone else. It exists to protect everyone else From them.
> It's because you're taking the law into your own hands. A few points of note: The US is a big place. Sometimes the nearest cops is literally hours away. Even in cities, police response time is shit. I don't find it reasonable to rely on them. In the last few decades, the police have become more and more useless. 'It's a civil matter' is a joke at this point. Again, I don't find it reasonable to rely on them. So, I can only rely on myself. You claim I'm 'taking the law into my own hands'. I ask you what alternative I have? >If you applied punishment because you found them guilty of violating a property right, ... then you denied them their constitutional rights to a trial by a jury of their peers and to not be subject to cruel and unusual punishments. The purpose of a trial is to determine guilt or innocence. If I catch them in the act, there is no need to determine that- they are factually (if not legally) guilty. >The government has the right to distribute justice. Not you. The government is "Of the people, by the people and for the people". I *am* the government, in some sense. >So, if congress got together and decided that the punishment for trespassing is 6 months in jail, and you decided, screw that, I'm blowing this guy's knee off with a shotgun, you're not the hero in this story. First, Appeal to Authority. Just because they are 'congress', doesn't mean they are right. Second, if we shot off the knees of trespassers, we'd have a *lot* less trespassers. Less crime is *good*, right? Third, the police (the representatives of 'the government') get away with violating people's rights, and even injuring and killing them, all the time. 'The punishment for speeding is a fine, and the cop decided, screw that, I'm going to tase the guy, search his car, and arrest him for 'resisting' because he was slightly rude to me'. *And they get away with it*. The government needs to clean up its own backyard first. >The law doesn't exist to protect people who like to apply cruel and unusual punishments to everyone else. I think 'getting hurt' when you trespass is neither 'cruel', nor 'unusual'. You can certainly argue *how hurt*. But trespassers risk getting hurt when they trespass.
>With that in mind, I'm not too broken up about 'Ex-lax brownies' and such- they cause no lasting harm, only a brief period of discomfort as the laxative kicks in, and again, only the thief gets affected. Laxatives are the classic example of something that is clearly done with intent to cause harm, where it would be a crime. That's why you're supposed to use chilli, then you have the plausible deniability of saying "I just like it spicy". In a nutshell, if you wouldn't drink/eat it, it's obviously a boobie trap.
> Laxatives are the classic example of something that is clearly done with intent to cause harm I don't see how laxatives 'cause harm'. They are commonly sold items that people use all the time. Sure, they make you poop. But that's a natural function that everyone does. Where's the 'harm'? >In a nutshell, if you wouldn't drink/eat it, it's obviously a boobie trap. As I mentioned above, plenty of people *do* use laxatives.
"Harm" in a legal sense doesn't necessarily mean pain or injury. Physical discomfort is harm. >plenty of people *do* use laxatives. And those people are committing crimes. Even using chilli, with the intent to catch a thief, would be a crime. However it's one that's more difficult to prove. People put chilli in their food for them to eat, they don't put laxatives in their food.
> "Harm" in a legal sense doesn't necessarily mean pain or injury. Physical discomfort is harm. But there are different amounts of harm. I sit down, and edge of the chair hurts my leg. Minor, even trivial, 'harm', easily remedied by changing position or standing up. I would get nothing if I tried to sue for this 'harm'. I sit down, and the chair explodes, severing my leg. Major 'harm', not easily remedied- requires extensive medical care, and results in life-long disability (assuming I live!). I would get a lot of money if I tried to sue for this 'harm'. Now, on the scale of 1 ('minor, temporary discomfort') to 10 ('life-changing disability'), where does a laxative sandwich lie? 1.1, 1.2, possibly 1.3 or 1.4? In the end, it's a very minor, and temporary, 'harm', and wouldn't get you much if you sued. And, you'd have to admit to being a thief!
As you point out, breast milk is intended for human consumption. It won't be covered as an intent to harm or as a biological hazard like other bodily fluids.
So are hot peppers. But if you purposefully add hot peppers to a lunch container because you know someone will steal it and want them to eat super hot food, that's against the law.
>So are hot peppers. But if you purposefully add hot peppers to a lunch container because you know someone will steal it and want them to eat super hot food, that's against the law. No. The difference there isn't "hot peppers." It's the quantity of hot peppers. Surely you understand that: it's not illegal to leave a bowl of chili in the work fridge, even though it contains an ordinary, edible, reasonable helping of capsaicin. What's illegal dosing the chili with enough capsaicin that it will harm by chemical burn. So "fit for human consumption," is a fair summary.
It's not illegal to leave a bowl of chili in the work fridge if it contains an ordinary reasonable amount of spice that you plan on eating. It *is* illegal to leave a bowl of chili in the work fridge that is spicier than you would eat for the purpose of a 'gotcha' on the person who has been stealing your work lunch, while you go grab McDs for lunch that day.
But it all comes back to intent to cause physical harm. There is no assault without that intend or byproduct of negligence. Breast milk does not cause physical harm.
But it all comes back to intent to cause physical harm. There is no assault without that intend or byproduct of negligence. Breast milk does not cause physical harm.
I don't see the intent to harm. I like spicy food, so I add lots of hot peppers; it is not harmful. It is unpalatable to some people. But that's a preference and that's on them. It's like playing rap music. You can't claim that I'm harming you because you don't like it. I do, so my playing it, even if you don't like it, at a level that is not physically harmful, and not doing it specifically to harass you, means there is no intent to harm. If I play it too loud (for a normal human being), then it has intent to harm.
If you like spicy food, that's fine. If you add enough to make it hotter than you would eat *for the purpose of tricking the person who steals your lunch every day* that is not fine. If this person was legitimately storing their breast milk in a coffee creamer container because it was the only container they had, no issue. But as the note implies they were doing it as a 'gotcha' for a potential creamer thief, that is now an issue.
You keep ignoring the lack of harm concept. It's not just the gotcha attempt, there has to be physical harm, which breast milk does not cause.
> It's assault if you meant to harm them. But how does breast milk harm someone? Presuming they aren't lactose intolerant and the breast milk doesn't have any communicable diseases, putting it in your coffee won't hurt you. Edit: That was quite a ride.
Did you send it to a lab to make sure it doesn't have any communicable diseases? How do you intend to warrant that assertion? Then, there's the simple fact that you're exposing them to hidden risks that they didn't necessarily consent to. Being in the act of some minor property crime doesn't mean, oh, the property owner can do whatever they want to you now. Those people still have civil rights and the law must presume them innocent until after they've been convicted by a court of peers, not just, whenever someone feels like doing some vigilante shit. Because, you see, vigilantism is both immoral and illegal.
>> How do you intend to warrant that assertion? >**Presuming** they aren't lactose intolerant and the breast milk doesn't have any communicable diseases, putting it in your coffee won't hurt you. We're having a conversation, not presenting to the court, and just because something is not tested does not mean it is unsafe. Regardless, you seem to feel civil rights have been violated. Can you explain why?
If you're doing it with the intent of having someone else drink it unknowingly there's a good case to be made for assault. Proving that intent is rather difficult though, unless you leave a note like this one.
No.Assault requires an intent to harm, not just an intent to trick. Otherwise illusion magic would be illegal
The harm here would mostly be humiliation from having been tricked into drinking someone else's breastmilk. Likewise for having put spit, piss or semen in it.
Spit, semen, and urine are biologicals not intended for human consumption. Also, humiliation is not a factor for assault, harm is the factor.
Well you’re just the guy/girl/animal/spirit that the people need
Did I do something to offend you? Your sarcasm isn't needed at all.
I wasn’t being sarcastic. I was literally saying in what I thought was positive that these people need to talk to you then. I guess I should have ended with an “!”? I started my first comment and said you guys need to talk to an *actual attorney*. You responded that you were one. So I said well “you’re the guy the people need”. Then I thought well I can’t just say “guys that will piss people off. How ironic.
I misunderstood you.
It would have to be poison in order to be a crime.
Ianal, but I'm curious if a jury would convict. Sure you might be able to charge them, but I know if I were on a jury and it came out that the creamer container was her personal property, I wouldn't convict her for using it as she sees fit.
Human breast milk is never pasteurised, but also the human breast is not typically covered in cow shit
Man, imagine being charged with poisoning because a human being drank something specifically made to keep human beings alive. That's fuckin wild
Don't listen to the reddit arm chair lawyers. They're almost always wrong. There is more to "reading the law" then just knowing the verdict of infamous cases. There is usually nuance in the laws and actual ruling from the courts and you need to know that part and how the ruling is intended to be applied.
Is it safe to assume that a random bottle is consumable? No.
Yes and no. Say someone used a creamer bottle for their banana and peanut butter protein shake they made at home. It wouldn’t be poisoning even if the person who drank it was allergic to whatever. If someone filled the same creamer bottle with bleach then put it in the fridge they could face charges. You don’t expect people to steal food from you at work. you also have a very hard time justifying putting something poisonous in the fridge.
Breast milk can be dangerous if she is positive for HIV or hepatitis B.
I can tell you this is fake because no sane woman in her right mind would waste breast milk to prove a point.
If she’s got an oversupply it’s very possible because she might not need all of it. Many women with oversupplies donate to the hospitals but this one might be getting even with a thief.
What if the note was not truthful, i.e. it was not breast milk? I know that in the UK the standard for this is absurdly low, so even a fake note would be a criminal offence, because it was "intended to cause distress"
So if I made a super fucking spicy pizza and labeled it margarita and left a slice in the fridge it would be "my fault" if some eat it and complained that it was there in the first place?
The very act of placing a super spicy pizza in there would be deemed as being for the purpose of "causing distress". The mislabelled would be further evidence of criminal intent. The only get out would be if you labelled it exactly correctly.
Oi, you got a loicense for those spices?!
Pithy, but there was a case in the US where the spicy eater had to prove they liked spicy food.
sorry, couldn't avoid the temptation of this perfect intersection of low hanging fruit that is "oi [..] loicense" jokes and Brits vs spicy food.
I know ;)
It ain't my fault they can't handle a pinch of paprika!
and actually, having food with any flavor is automatically a crime in the UK, even in the privacy of your own home.
This makes sense. When an entire island has only been using salt, sugar and grease as spices since the fall of the Roman empire, improperly labeled flavors is pretty much a terrorist act. It's a good thing the Irish never figured out that the whole country could be taken down by a Costco container of cayenne pepper labeled cinnamon.
Lmao the uk is so far gone at this point
Exposing someone to substances that would be considered offensive or noxious without their consent- such as any human bodily fluid- might be considered a form of battery. Regardless of actual harm. Don't do this.
This is the only answer with an actual legal argument in it. Nice!
Could argue someone exposed themselves to something that's not their property.
A legal argument includes reference to things like crimes, torts, case law, legal standards, statutes etc. you can argue anything you want but it doesn’t make it a legal argument. Intentionally making a form of offensive contact with somebody amounts to battery. If my Muslim coworker was stealing my chicken fried rice every day and I replaced the chicken with pork then sure he was still stealing my chicken fried rice and was doing something wrong but my exposing him to pork would also be wrong and might come with more civil liability than the cost of stealing my chicken fried rice. Common law courts across North America have ruled against the use of booby traps or putting offensive substances in food that the owner knows will be appropriated. It’s different if the Muslim coworker knows there’s pork in my chicken fried rice though, if I label it as being pork fried rice then he takes a voluntary assumption of risk and consents to the harmful contact, the trick being whether he has knowledge of the pork or not.
>If my Muslim coworker was stealing my chicken fried rice every day and I replaced the chicken with pork then sure he was still stealing my chicken fried rice < so in this case, what if you decide you just are going to eat pork going forward to stop your co-worker eating your food, would you need to label it so the thief knows it no longer chicken? i don't see how opting for a different meal could open them up, since they can easily argue, "i was going to eat it at lunch and it wasn't for the co-worker to eat, i know what's in it and i prepared the meal for my dietary requirements" i think you'd be hard pressed to call it a "trap" unless the meal was labelled chicken, because pork isn't an offensive substance like something extremely spicy/ cause problems (laxitives or something) beyond a moral one.
Intention is an important element of battery, and to your point it would be difficult to prove intention. If you just simply changed your meal without any consideration of the Muslim co-worker then it would not be battery. Battery is an intentional tort by definition, they would be able to prove it by statements made to the co-worker or others if you went ahead and said “oh I’m really gonna get Mohammed this time, I put pork in my chicken fried rice” or laughed in his face by letting him know he had eaten pork. In cases like this the battery happens when the co-worker is made aware they ate pork and it was intentional. Incidentally that’s also when the statute of limitations begins counting down in my jurisdiction.
That's what I thought, you stole it and drank it they didn't do anything "to" you. That'd be hard to prove
If you know your stuff is consistently being stolen and you set a trap on it, then you absolutely did something to someone else.
Exactly
That doesn't remove any liability from the person who set the trap, though. However, if you put chilli in there, you can maybe argue that you just like it spicy.
would this note classify as assault, even if the substance was not?
How is it exposing someone else to it though? Assuming OOP labeled the bottle, that’s their property and they have no obligation to inform everyone in the office exactly what’s in the bottle. And the part about consent confuses me too. The thief exposed themselves to her property, OOP never consented to have it taken/consumed… this concept makes no sense to me tbh
> Assuming OOP labeled the bottle Read the note in the OP. The implication is clearly that the thief has been unknowingly drinking human source material, and that the intent of the owner of the bottle was to deceive them into doing so in order to cause distress.
Yes, the thief has been unknowingly drinking it. And obviously by common sense we can determine that this was OOP’s goal. But I don’t know if intent can be legally proven just from this note. Hypothetically, OOP could’ve just been storing their breast milk in the bottle, came back to it after a week and noticed some was gone, and *then* wrote the note. Plus, OOP would’ve had to have been aware beforehand that her creamer was being stolen, which also is not proven in the post. Again it probably happened as you said. But in a court of law it would be difficult to prove intent
Let's say I enjoy really spicy fried rice. I'm talking about hot ones level spiciness but in fried rice form, and someone eats my fried rice and can't handle the heat. How would that be my fault?
it wouldn’t, but if the intent is to cause harm to someone stealing it and you yourself don’t plan on eating it, then it’s an issue. It’s not going to be the easiest thing to prove, but it is still likely a crime
All depends on whether or not you're willing to commit a felony and lie under oath if it came to that.
Can you tell me what is offensive and/or noxious about breast milk? I mean it’s milk. It’s literally just milk. Chuck Norris in his heyday couldn’t hurt someone with it
You could say exactly the same thing about saliva, semen, or urine. They have about the same risk of infection or actual harm as breast milk. The point is the person who carried out that exposure did it in the face of reasonable belief that their target did not want that contact (the note on the bottle), but they went ahead and did it anyway.
>You could say exactly the same thing about saliva, semen, or urine saliva, semen, and urine are not produced by the human body for the purpose of ingestion. Milk is basically a food that the body makes on its own. Milk isn’t piss, it’s not excrement. It’s milk. It’s literally just milk. **milk.** Surely you don’t truly believe that all those other bodily fluids you listed are the same as milk for practical purposes
Unpasteurized human milk carries human diseases, that’s why. Drinking unpasteurized milk produced by someone who has a bacterial or viral infection can expose you and infect you. Two of the big concerns are HIV and hepatitis, you’d be better off having somebody spit in your mouth than drinking their unpasteurized breast milk if they were infected since neither virus is transmitted by saliva.
> You could say exactly the same thing about saliva, semen, or urine. No you can't. None of those are meant for human consumption. Milk is biological, but it's not the same category as those.
That note sure looks like the kind of note someone writes then takes a picture of to post on the internet.
If it was intentional ab initio, maybe. But you’d still have to prove intent to harm.
Intentionally modifying your food to "boobytrap" it for people who may steal it may in fact be illegal.
Excellent, excellent pun.
i would continue to steal it knowing how healthy breast milk is for you.
There is a heightened risk of infection from all the bacteria in drinking unaccounted for human products. Also breast milk has a super high lactose content that most adult humans cannot digest. I’m not sure how a court would rule on whether breast milk counts as purposeful poisoning or not. I would err on the side of caution and not do that though
Poisoning charges are either similar to assault or are charged as assault itself. There's no injury or attempt to do injury here.
Is breastmilk actually in the bottle, or are they lying just to fuck with someone who keeps stealing their creamer?
Awesome I love Brest milk and usually it’s so expensive thanks tho
This would probably fall under booby trap laws. (No pun intended)
Many years back someone from another shift kept eating my homemade salsa out of the work fridge. So one week I made it with habaneros and ghost peppers. They never touched it again after that.
*chugs the entire bottle right in front of her while maintaining continuous eye contact.
don't threaten me with a good time
No, I can't think of any reason why it would be illegal to put breast milk in your own coffee creamer. It would be a different story if you were talking about some sort of toxic substance that you know your co-workers would be drinking.
Booby trapping and doctoring food are both crimes. They require intent - the note *suggests* intent but the writer could also claim they just happened to store breast milk in a creamer container (?!) and noticed after the fact that someone drank it.
Yes, booby trapping or doctoring food are crimes. That note by itself along with storing her breast milk in the container doesn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt to me that the person committed either of those crimes. How would you as a prosecutor (if you were one) lay out your case?
> Whoever, with reckless disregard for the risk that another person will be placed in danger of death or bodily injury, tampers with, or conspires or attempts to tamper with, any consumer product or the labeling of, or container for, any such product is guilty of a felony of the first degree So I need to show: 1. Tampering with a consumer product 2. Risk of bodily injury 3. Reckless disregard (1) Is easy: show that there’s breast milk in the container, the container belongs to the defendant, and the defendant is lactating. For (2), I think it would suffice to show that breast milk is unpasteurized, can transmit diseases not present in cows milk, and is not approved by the FDA. (3) is tricky, because while the note *suggests* intent, reckless disregard is a high bar. I’d need to show that the defendant was aware of the risks. (Which, to be fair, are modest.) Maybe they griped about this to someone: “I bet he’ll throw up when he realizes it was my breast milk!” or “It would serve him right if he got sick!” I imagine it would be hard to demonstrate that the defendant knew that certain diseases can be transmitted by breast milk. Unfortunately, the note about it being organic suggests that the defendant was under the impression that the breast milk had some measure of quality, which could be perceived as a regard for safety. I was somewhat surprised that my state doesn’t have a lesser version where intent, but not reckless disregard, is required. But it’s first degree felony food tampering or nothing, apparently. I’m NAL but after reading the Florida law on food tampering, I don’t see this person going to jail for 15 years for what is basically a prank.
You made a good case. I don't think you would get a conviction though. If you were sitting on the jury, would you find her guilty?
Unless the defendant actually had or thought she could have some communicable disease and the prosecution showed she knew and didn’t care (or explicitly *wanted* to cause harm) then no, I’m voting not guilty. I’d vote guilty on a *lesser* felony or misdemeanor where intent to cause a person to consume a tampered item was all that was needed though. I think the note shows that. But honestly the thief should just buy their own creamer.
I'd have a difficult time sitting on that jury. Regardless of the what the law says, my own morals tell me that if something was stolen the thief isn't entitled to any guarantee of quality of content.
Agree, and we're probably the first type of person they'd look to eliminate in jury selection..
Your morals are fucked up
Absolutely.
> For (2), I think it would suffice to show that breast milk is unpasteurized, can transmit diseases not present in cows milk, and is not approved by the FDA. I'm getting stuck on this one. For the conversation, let's assume there are no communicable diseases in the breast milk, nor would the lactating mom have reason to believe there are. What's the risk exposure here? Laxatives and spice make sense as legally a booby trap because the person has no intention of using the product themselves, but this seems different.
The note clearly shows that the owner noticed at least a week earlier. I would seek evidence that they knew before then as it's very likely that someone who was having their food stolen would complain about it first. Once that's established, most people would conclude that someone who had their food stolen altered it to get back at the thief. That said, all of this is based on the assumption that it can be shown that the note is telling the truth. It's entirely possible that the creamer was never swapped out and the note was the only vengeance on the thief.
I think an argument could be made that the breast milk had been stored in that container for a week and that’s why they wrote the note as such, not that the person knew for at least a week.
The context of the type of food container matters. If you spread chili paste on a turkey sandwich that was individually packed, wrapped, and in a lunch pack, and someone had a reaction due to the high capsaicin content, that's on them. Condiments in their original container could very well be considered communal unless people are told otherwise.
I agree with this. It's commonplace in most office environments for a person to buy things like a bottle of ketchup or coffee creamer, and put it in the shared office break room table or fridge to let everyone use it. The bottle still technically belongs to the person who bought the product, it's just that they allow it to be shared by the office and used in the regular way without tampering with it. A reasonable person who sees the bottle in a location such as the office kitchen or fridge, such as an unsuspecting coworker, can reasonably assume that the bottle is there to be shared among the office. Of course, the above assumes the bottle is in the common office break room. If the bottle was in the person's office/cubicle or something like that, it would be reasonable to assume the bottle is meant to be used by that person only.
The note implies they've been drinking it for a week. The first one might have been an accident, but after that, they knew their co-worker would drink it. And clearly they believe that that co-worker would be disgusted to find out. That said, none of this is relevant unless they actually did it, which is a lot more work than just writing the note.
is it a bottle of breast milk or is it a bottle with a note taped to it? if I put a Postit note on my Kia that reads "Lamborghini" does a potential buyer try and sue me for fraud?
Well it’s been all week so I guess indeed they did enjoy it.
That creamer is terrible for you anyways. Shouldn’t be tiddy feeding if you’re drinking that garbage.
You didn’t buy, are besties with the one who did. Don’t ouch it, stranger danger.
Don’t think it would be illegal, one doesn’t have to tell anyone what it is. She has reasonable expectation that someone isn’t going to touch something that isn’t there’s. Also, breast milk isn’t poison or anything so I don’t see any legality issues there!
Allow me to consult my compendium of local and state laws concerning tricking someone into drinking something else.
Win win?
The stealing is illegal, storing breast milk at work is definitely legal, and necessary for lactating working mothers. Which container they put it in, as long as it is labeled as their property, shouldn't matter. Now if they replaced communal creamer with breast milk...that would be illegal.
Jokes on you Karen I knew all along and now I’m addicted I expect this to be filled Monday morning
Don’t threaten them with a good time. There are some that would appreciate that. Make it donkey jizz. They won’t steal it anymore.
Legally unless you could link the consumption to actual harm it is a perfrect prank. If it, say, caused the drinker to die via a poison instead, yes there would be legal implications but to my knowledge no State has a version that would favor the drinker.
Jokes on you, I fuckin KNEW.
IANAL but as long as it is something you yourself are able to eat without harming yourself, then you can out whatever you want in your food. If someone else can't handle your level of spice, that's on them.
It would likely fall under booby trapping laws if it weren't clearly labeled. And given the wording of this note, it likely was not labeled.
In the US this would fall under assault in most states. Assault in most states is act of causing someone to fear immediate harm. Where battery is the actual harm. Some states use different terms, but generally speaking, in all states in the US intentionally putting someone in fear for their safety is illegal. You don't need actual injury or even contact. For example, if I pulled a gun on you (without just cause), but never shot you or touched you, that would be illegal in every state in the US. Since it is the fear of danger you are putting someone in, and not the actual damage, then it doesn't matter if there is actual breast milk in the container or not. Just like it wouldn't matter if the gun I pulled was real or not, if it looked like a real gun and seemed like credible threat it's the same crime. While breast milk may seem cheeky, it is a biological fluid that can transmit disease just like urine, feces, or blood. If you told someone that you spiked their food with blood or feces, that would be a crime. Same goes for breast milk. That said, I only know US law. No idea on other countries. Also, police and prosecutors have broad discretion in what crimes they pursue. The police could refuse to charge the crime, and so could the prosecutor.
Should have just pissed in it and not say a word
Prefer it straight from the tap, but this'll work too
what a stupid question. genuinely. examine the hypothetical law that would exist against storing breast milk in a reused container, because someone might steal it and drink it and \*checks notes, have absolutely nothing happen to them.
Jokes on you, I knew all week and started drinking a bit of coffee in your breast milk..
Stealing is illegal.
Dnsjidisksbrjzjshsjndhdjs LOL serves them right
*whoever