Are traffic signs on private property legally enforceable in Upstate NY? Upstate NY here. You see them everywhere: private property parking lots (mall parking lots, Lowes/Target/Walmart parking lots, etc.) that have stop signs, handicap parking spaces, double yellow lines...all the same signs/markers you see out on the open/public road. So my question is: are these signs legally enforceable, seeing that they are on private property? For instance, if I fail to come to a stop at a stop sign located in a Walmart parking lot, can I get a ticket for that? If so, then how?? I couldn't put a stop sign in the middle of my back yard and then have police officers hand out tickets if someone drove across my lawn and didn't obey it. And if they're not enforceable, then what's the point of them?!?
This recently came up in a local PA homeowner association. Legally they own the roads in their development, but they have erected stop signs to make it clear who has the right of way and asked the township police to enforce them. A resident challenged the right of the police to enforce traffic laws on private property, but lost his appeal (albeit at the municipal level). The judge explained that the residents and any visitors had a reasonable expectation that the traffic signs would be obeyed, and that therefore violating them was just as dangerous as violating them on public roads, and that the same law and penalties would therefore be applied.
In California (where lost+found laws have been discussed quite a lot), this would be either "lost property" or "abandoned property". With abandoned property, you can do what you want. With lost property, it is legal to ignore it. If you take it, you have the obligation to try to return it to the owner. If you don't do that, it's theft. If you don't take it, you have no obligation whatsoever. Put it somewhere where the loser (the person who lost it) is more likely to find it, for example on the street. Don't take anything. Clarification for comments: There is a box. And the owner of the box is nowhere to be seen. That box is by definition lost or abandoned - it is abandoned if the owner got rid of it intentionally, it is lost if the owner is looking for it. We don't know. We can make guesses depending on the situation. No matter whether lost or abandoned, you are legally absolutely fine if you just ignore it. You have no reason to try to return it to its owner. If you don't make it your business, it's not your business. But if you decide you want the box, or bits of it, and it isn't abandoned (which is hard to know for sure), then you have to try to find the owner first, and if you don't find them, then you can keep it.
In most states, the answer would be less clear, as First Amendment protections begin falling away quickly when you enter private property. In California, though, there is some strong precedent indicating that this behavior would be protected. In Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center, 23 Cal. 3d 902 (1979), the California Supreme Court held that "the soliciting at a shopping center of signatures for a petition to the government is an activity protected by the California Constitution." That case adopted the reasoning of a dissent in a previous case where the court had rejected such an argument: It bears repeated emphasis that we do not have under consideration the property or privacy rights of an individual homeowner or the proprietor of a modest retail establishment. As a result of advertising and the lure of a congenial environment, 25,000 persons are induced to congregate daily to take advantage of the numerous amenities offered by the [shopping center there]. A handful of additional orderly persons soliciting signatures and distributing handbills in connection therewith, under reasonable regulations adopted by defendant to assure that these activities do not interfere with normal business operations ... would not markedly dilute defendant's property rights. I'd bet there is case law addressing religious leafleting, as well, but I don't know California law well enough to cite to it. Even if there isn't, though, the First Amendment's requirements of content-neutrality in government decisionmaking would probably require that the same protections be extended to religious speech. Of course, the answer to these kinds of questions always depends on the specific facts, requiring you to engage a lawyer to get a reliable answer. For a lower cost, you could also just ask the local police if they would enforce a request from the property owner to have you removed.
There is no law against lying in these circumstances. In fact, for a very modest sum, security companies sell dummy CCTV cameras to make this lie more convincing. However, trespass only happens if people have been warned so this works for literate people who speak English and see the sign. That leaves a very large group of people who would not be trespassing even with the sign. A further problem with a sign on the house is that people have no idea how far away they have to get in order to stop trespassing. In addition, legitimate visitors (uninvited or not) are not trespassers. It seems that people are coming onto your property because they are thirsty. A better way to deal with this is go to your local hardware store and replace the tap with a vandal proof tap that has a removable head. Keep that inside and put a sign next to the tap saying "Refrigerated Water $2 - knock on front door".
It depends on the laws of the jurisdiction. In Washington, speed limits are implemented via Chapter 46.61 RCW, the very first section of which states: The provisions of this chapter relating to the operation of vehicles refer exclusively to the operation of vehicles upon highways except: (1) Where a different place is specifically referred to in a given section. (2) The provisions of RCW 46.52.010 through 46.52.090, 46.61.500 through 46.61.525, and 46.61.5249 shall apply upon highways and elsewhere throughout the state We then turn to the question of what a &quot;vehicle&quot; is (this is the discussion of a number of legal treatises). Title 46 is about motor vehicles, but still you should look at the definition, if any, of &quot;vehicle&quot;. We have two definitions of vehicle in RCW 46.04.670. Definition 1 says that &quot;Vehicle&quot; includes every device capable of being moved upon a public highway and in, upon, or by which any persons or property is or may be transported or drawn upon a public highway, including bicycles Definition 2 omits the italicized bicycle inclusion, and explicitly excludes A bicycle, for the purposes of chapter 46.12, 46.16A, or 46.70 RCW, or for RCW 82.12.045((.)) This is a bit of a mess arising from legislative screwup, which should be resolved by appeal to RCW 1.12.025. The explicit-exclusion sections are about registration, dealers and taxes, and not speed limits. The latter version was recently reaffirmed effective July 23, 2023. The courts could therefore be somewhat inclined to not apply speed limits to bicycles, because bicycles were recently removed from the set of explicit vehicles. But as notes in the Eskridge's extensive discussion of a hypothetical ban on vehicles in Lafayette Park, there are multiple principles for interpreting laws, and &quot;legislative intent to assure safety&quot; would be one prominent consideration, in case the wording of the law is not crystal clear – as it is not, in this case.
Yes, barring any statutory prohibitions against such a rule. I would be very surprised if any existed. They don't exist in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with. Look up the local by-laws to be sure.
Washington state dedicated a section of their code to explicitly make this illegal (to install it, not just use it). RCW 46.37.685(1)(b) says It is unlawful for a person to have an installed license plate flipping device on a vehicle, use technology to flip a license plate on a vehicle, or use technology to change the appearance of a license plate on a vehicle. and it is illegal to sell them. Georgia does not seem to have a specific law on the topic, but the same effect holds under GA Code §40-2-41, which says: Unless otherwise permitted under this chapter, every vehicle required to be registered under this chapter, which is in use upon the highways, shall at all times display the license plate issued to the owner for such vehicle, and the plate shall be fastened to the rear of the vehicle in a position so as not to swing and shall be at all times plainly visible... It shall be the duty of the operator of any vehicle to keep the license plate legible at all times. No license plate shall be covered with any material unless the material is colorless and transparent. No apparatus that obstructs or hinders the clear display and legibility of a license plate shall be attached to the rear of any motor vehicle required to be registered in the state. We can start with the question of whether the vehicle must be registered: yes, it does. Then we can ask if "which is in use upon the highways" is true. This is not obvious, because that clause could be interpreted as meaning "which is at some time or other in use upon the highway", or else as "at those times when it is in use upon the highway". I strongly suspect that the courts would find in favor of the first interpretation, not the second, especially since the law also says that you must "keep the license plate legible at all times" (not "at all times when you are on the highway"). Finally, a plate flipper clearly "hinders the clear display and legibility of a license plate", and the law prohibits the attachment of such device, not just its use. So obscuring your license plate is just not legal.
Can a restrictive covenant deny a land owner the right to use a road on their own property? Yes. A restrictive covenant could impose such a limitation, although usually a court would disfavor that interpretation of a covenant unless no other reasonable interpretation is possible from the language of the covenant. This is basically because it would be lawful (at common law anyway) to convey the land in its entirety to the covenant beneficiary, so it is lawful to convey a lesser interest to that person. It isn't inherently unconscionable unless it makes the property subject to the covenant landlocked with no access to a public road, in which case some mandatory doctrines regarding a right of access would probably apply. Often this would be done to create a private drive across the &quot;front lot&quot; (which has direct access to a public road by other means) when the &quot;back lot&quot; of a parcel was conveyed by the owner of the combined lot to the new owner of the back lot. A covenant might be chosen instead of an outright conveyance of the dogleg of road because it retains mineral rights in the servient estate owner, because it clearly allocates property tax payment duties to the underlying owner as part of a larger economic deal, and/or because it could make a transaction possible that would otherwise be prohibited by subdivision requirements applicable in that locality. The restriction might also reduce the servient estate owner's liability for accidents arising from use of the covenant access easement, since it would ordinarily vest all maintenance and use regulation in the dominant estate owner. Some other common easements that deny the servient estate owner all use of land for a period of time are easements to allow staging of road construction activities, and easements incident to mineral rights in states where destruction of the surface is allowed if it is later restored when the minerals are extracted (such as Wyoming).