A man who sued his parents for throwing out his collection of pornography has won a lawsuit in western Michigan and can now begin the process of seeking compensation, according to AP News.
US District Judge Paul Maloney ruled in favour of 42-year-old David Werking, who took his parents to court alleging that they had no right to dispose of his porn stash. Mr Werking’s collection was reportedly binned by his parents while he was living at their home in Grand Haven, Michigan, for about 10 months following a divorce in 2016.
AP previously reported that, according to Mr Werking, his "irreplaceable" assortment of porn, which consisted of boxes of magazines and movies worth roughly $29,000, went missing when he was preparing to leave his parents’ home to move to Indiana in 2017. The parents eventually admitted that during the move they trashed the sizeable repertoire, which allegedly included titles such as “Frisky Business” and “Big Bad Grannys”.
According to the local Holland Sentinel newspaper, emails between Mr Werking and his father showed that the items included 12 full boxes of “pornography plus two boxes of sex toys”. There were also said to be over 1,600 DVDs and video tapes. In one of the emails, Mr Werking’s father reportedly told him that he had done him a “big favour by getting rid of all this stuff”.
However, Judge Maloney is said to have ruled that, “there is no question that the destroyed property was David’s property … defendants repeatedly admitted that they destroyed the property”.
In their defence, Mr Werking’s parents are said to have argued that they had asked their son not to bring the items home and that, as his landlords, they had the right to throw away the pornography. Yet, Judge Maloney was not convinced by their argument, reportedly saying that, “defendants do not cite any statute or caselaw to support their assertion that landlords can destroy property that they dislike”.
Judge Maloney then told both sides to file documents on the financial value of the porn as part of the financial compensation process.