It did not interfere with your enjoyment in any way.
You'd just parked it there.
And the chattel, the car, suffered no harm, no strat,
no scratch, no smell, nothing at all.
So, American law assumes that there are better ways of dealing with
this than promoting litigation and recognizing an action to be brought.
Instead of allowing an action for every tactile or touch-based interference and
then hoping that people are sensible enough not to sue, the law says,
let's just incorporate a basic idea of live and let live into the law.
So, instead of worrying that we have a law and
that everyone who bumps into the other person's luggage in
the New York subway might indeed bring an action and we have to filter it out later,
let's just now ensure that these actions don't lie to begin with.
If you want to ensure additional protection, say,
because you really value your chattel or car, you, as the owner,
ought to bear the burden of actual additional protection via self help.
Park it in a garage, buy a more expensive lock, or monitor it in better ways.
Let's not live with the idea that you have an action and people might not bring them,
the law says.
So, to digress for
a moment, this position in American law has a very interesting origin.
It actually dates back to a 19th century, actually 1843,
case before the Supreme Court of Illinois, known as Johnson versus Weedman.
And in this case, a rather bright, in fact very bright, and
young 34-year-old lawyer for the defendant convinced the court,
the Supreme Court, that a defendant's, or his client's, riding around
on the plaintiff's horse for 15 miles without any visible damage to the horse.
So, the plaintiff had handed over the horse to the defendant and
the defendant rode around on the horse for 15 miles.
There was no dispossession because the plaintiff had handed over the horse and
the horse seemed to enjoy it.
There was no visible damage.
He convinced the court that the defendant's riding around was
not actionable.
And that was the basis for today's law, trespass to chattels, that eventually
now provides that in the absence of actual harm to the chattel, no action will lie.
You can't even get nominal damages.
You can't even get an injunction, the law says in some extreme positions.