Mail sent to my address for someone who doesn&#39;t live there and I don&#39;t do any work for free I don't work for free. I don't write on envelopes, call the post office, or do anything that I don't personally want to do unless I am getting paid to do it. I keep getting mail in my mailbox that isn't for me or anyone residing at my address. I don't want this mail, and as far as the effort I have remaining it is writing this post and reading the answers, as well as immediately dropping all my mail (that includes mail for me) into the garbage bin above which I occasionally pull some random items to keep and open. I know I am not required to work for free and write on other people's mail that ends up in my mailbox. I am a free person and not required to do servile labor without compensation. There appears to be a contradiction to my lack of enslavement or indentured servitude with a concept that someone can put mail in my mailbox and then expect me to work for someone else if that mail isn't for me. How does this actually work? If my intent is not to do unpaid labor, and a natural consequence of this is that other people's mail to my address ends up in the trash bin how is this a crime? My intent is for the mail to disappear and take care of itself, what ends up happening is that it sadly descends into the trash bin and doesn't disappear.
There appears to be a contradiction to my lack of enslavement or indentured servitude with a concept that someone can put mail in my mailbox and then expect me to work for someone else if that mail isn't for me. The law can, and does, impose duties on a person that that person never chose to accept. For example, paying taxes. The prohibition on slavery does not mean that no requirements can be placed on a person. As another answer has said: in the US 18 USC 1702 makes it a crime to improperly handle mail, including to &quot;secrete&quot; or &quot;destroy&quot; such mail. This is a Federal felony, punishable by fine and up to 5 years imprisonment (and being required to work in prison is an exception to the prohibition on slavery). The Findlaw page &quot;Is It Illegal to Shred Previous Tenants' Mail?&quot; reads: Is It Illegal to Open or Shred a Previous Tenant's Mail? Yes. It is a federal crime to open or destroy mail that is not intended for you. The law provides that you can not &quot;destroy, hide, open, or embezzle&quot; mail that is not addressed to you. If you intentionally open or destroy someone else's mail, you are committing obstruction of correspondence, which is a felony. If you are found guilty of obstruction of correspondence, you could potentially face five years in prison and/or fines. What Should I Do If I Receive the Previous Tenant's Mail? It is common to receive previous tenants' mail, especially if previous tenants did not change their mailing address with the U.S. Postal Service. If this happens, you should write something like &quot;return to sender,&quot; &quot;wrong address,&quot; or &quot;person does not reside here anymore&quot; and put it back in the mailbox. The mail carrier will take care of it from there. The page &quot;Did You Accidentally Commit a Felony? What to Do With Mail That Isn’t Yours&quot; reads: There’s a reason that the federal government makes tampering with mail illegal. Most people receive a number of personal and confidential documents through the mail that can be used to steal their identity. In fact, seven people were arrested in Georgia for stealing mail and cashing the checks they found. In 2018, a postal worker received felony and misdemeanor charges for failing to deliver thousands of pieces of mail that he later dumped in a ravine. But for every person who intentionally mishandles mail and makes headlines, there are many more who accidentally break the law just by failing to properly forward the wrong address mail they receive. The page &quot;How to Return Mail to Sender&quot; from US Global mail reads: Step One: Write “Not At This Address” On The Envelope This does also work with parcels! You need to ensure that you write “Not at this address” on the packaging. You might be tempted to write “Return to sender” in this instance but this isn’t the proper wording here. Alongside this, there are some other considerations at this stage. You must ensure that any barcodes are defaced. Otherwise, you will find that the parcel or envelope will come back to your address. However, be careful to not cross the address. The mail carrier needs to understand that the person no longer lives there. If the problem persists (i.e. you keep getting mail addressed to the previous resident), you need to let your mail carrier know. Alternatively, you can contact your local Post Office. Either way, this should help stop the issue. Step Two: Give The Mail Item Back To Your Carrier If you are at home when your mail carrier delivers your items, you need to hand the envelope or parcel back to them. Make sure you explain that the addressee does not live at your address anymore. Of course, you need to write on it before you give it to the delivery person. If you are not at home when your mail carrier typically delivers, you can put the pieces back into your mailbox. Make sure you erect the red flag when you do so. This signifies that there is something for the mail carrier to collect the next time they do their rounds. I have been told by postal officials that these rules apply only to first class mail or higher (such as express mail) and does not apply to &quot;standard&quot; (bulk) or third class (junk) mail. None of the sources say that, however I have also been told by a postal employee tht mail addressed to 'occupant&quot; or &quot;our friends at {address}&quot; has reached its destination if it gets to the right address, and may safely be discarded. Conclusion The actions described in the question are criminal in the US, although perhaps not very likely to be prosecuted. I think they would also be criminal in many other countries. They are also profoundly anti-social, as they deprive others of potentially important mail, possibly causing them serious inconvenience or even loss, to save a trivial effort.
Employees are only required to work in the sense that refusal to report can result in discipline (like reprimand or firing) and forfeit of whatever money you would have earned had you shown up. This is exactly the same way federal employees (or most employees, for that matter) are always required to work. The fact that they're not being paid on time has nothing to do with whether it's slavery. That's because pay has nothing to do with slavery. Slavery is forced labor and/or ownership of people, and civilian federal employees are just as free to quit as they normally are. Military personnel can't freely quit, but they can never freely quit. Nothing relevant has changed for either group. Not paying employees is potentially a violation of labor law, and the government in fact lost a lawsuit after the last shutdown for violating the FLSA. If that happens this time too, they'll have to pay damages.
No, there is no general publicly accessible directory of lawsuits against private individuals, even if it concerns yourself. The complaint must identify you as the defendant indicating a ladungsfähige Anschrift, § 253 Ⅱ, Ⅳ, 130 ZPO. Commencing an action requires service of process, § 253 Ⅰ ZPO. I presume you are not a De-Mail user. So you will get a hardcopy. You may not know that, but such mail in Germany is usually sent in yellow envelopes. The mailman will carefully compare the mailbox label and in case of a match record the date and time of successful delivery on the envelope as well as a slip of paper returned to the sender, the court in this case. Now this will obviously fail in your case (unless the landlord maliciously attached a corresponding label to a mailbox). In a civil action the court “pretends” to be dumb regarding facts. The landlord must try to track you down. Evidently he knew your email address, so he had some contact details. If he was evil, the next option would be to ask the court for an öffentliche Zustellung, § 185 ZPO. If the court agreed, this means there will be, for instance, in the city hall a paper on a bulletin board “To the attention of Coala, last known address …: There is mail for you to pick up at my office.” Two weeks later the letter is automatically considered to be delivered.Some cities (example: Cologne, NRW) also publish these documents on the internet, but due to GDPR considerations delete them after a certain period now. If there was a lawsuit, there will have been a default judgment by now, i.e. you will have lost just by being a no‑show. However, you said you have never received the bill. This means the landlord must have produced false evidence, claim to have sent the bill and a subsequent warning notice, but there was none. But this is an entirely different issue.
Your rights notwithstanding, the government has the power to do such things under appropriate circumstances. First, you would have to be in violation of some ordinance, for instance in Columbus OH you are a violator if the grass is over 12". This should generate a notice informing you what the issue is and giving a deadline for remedy. If you don't comply by the deadline, they are then empowered to send out guys with tools, and the city will bill you for the work. You could call them and ask what the deal is. They might say "We put the notice on your gate", or "we mailed it to you". From a legal POV, the onus is on them to be sure that you're notified. It would be a good idea to verify that this isn't a scam. [Addendum] Bryan TX kindly provides a video about code enforcement, and gives a link where you can go directly to the section of interest (starting 0:43). Your description of the situation is at variance with what they say is the law (12"; 7 day advance notice whereafter they will correct the violation. They also say no notice is required for second violation within a year; $100 administration fee added to costs; lien will be placed on property if unpaid). I assume that your back yard is publicly visible: they recognize that "when the area observed is plainly visible, from a vantage point where the Code Officer has the right to be there, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy". That could include visible from a neighbor's property if the inspector has permission from the neighbor to be there. Otherwise, there's a simmering 4th Amendment problem (assuming that they didn't get a search warrant).
You may be interested in a recent New York Times article, "The Lonely Death of George Bell", which described in detail the case of a man who was found dead in his apartment (of natural causes). It took a long time for him to be positively identified, and no near relatives could be located. Affairs were handled by a city official called a "public administrator". Bell's valuable possessions were sold at public auction and the funds added to his estate. Items of no significant value were discarded (a junk removal business was hired to clean out his apartment; a few items were kept by the workers). They did eventually find his will, and at least some of his heirs, so his estate went to them. The public administrator had Bell cremated by a local crematorium, with the ashes stored permanently in their columbarium. The cost was paid out of Bell's estate. If he hadn't had any assets, or hadn't been positively identified, the article mentions that he would have been buried in a "potter's field" at the city's expense.
In general, "a signed piece of paper" is not "a contract". It may be a record of a contract, but the contract itself is the meeting of minds where an agreement is reached and doesn't depend on the existence of the piece of paper. (Depending on the jurisdiction, some sorts of contract are required to be in writing, but this doesn't usually apply to employment contracts; it's usually contracts involving land.) What is far more worrying to me is that you don't know how much they are going to pay you. That suggests there hasn't been a meeting of minds, and there is no contract. (It might be that "the going rate" is good enough to form a contract - to determine that would require advice from a local lawyer.) I suggest you don't write up a formal agreement, but nag your boss to decide how much they are actually going to pay you.
I think this shows a misunderstanding of the meaning of the GDPR. A data subject has the right to demand information, correction, deletion etc. about some of their data held by some institutions, depending on the legal basis for the data processing. One John Smith does not have the right to see the data of any other data subject named John Smith, and he cannot even demand to know if there are other John Smiths in the database. The data controller has to make reasonable steps to ensure that an individual who seeks account information is in fact the individual who is the data subject. In the case of an email, that's usually easy -- if John Smith can access the mail account jsmith@sample.org, one can assume that he is the John Smith who opened the account. If not, then not. If the data controller has the birthplace and birthdate in their records, they can possibly match that against some government-issue identity document, too, but why would they have that data?
If the sticker is not easily removable, it would likely fall under defacement of the mail which is illegal according to 18 U.S. Code § 1705 - Destruction of letter boxes or mail: Whoever willfully or maliciously injures, tears down or destroys any letter box or other receptacle intended or used for the receipt or delivery of mail on any mail route, or breaks open the same or willfully or maliciously injures, defaces or destroys any mail deposited therein, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. They do not have the right to deface your mail while they are holding it for you, and just because it's not inside an actual mailbox because it doesn't fit is not an exception. However, that requires arguing that a sticker is actually defacement. If it can easily be removed, like a sticky note, then you likely won't win that argument. In fact, many universities which must handle mail services for students advise that rubber banding a note around the mail is acceptable, as is writing student information onto the mail. So complaining about the sticker would likely just cause them to attach it in a different way that does not qualify as defacement. You can't completely stop them from advertising their stuff, and it's really not much different than if they had gone around and put a door hanger on all of your doors.