A man has won a lawsuit against his parents for getting rid of his pornography collection worth $25,000.
The parents must now pay damages to their son for an amount which is yet to be determined.
He had kept a detailed record of how much money he spent on the porn, most of which was from the 80s and 90s. He is now demanding triple that amount as punishment for ‘wanton destruction of property’.
In total, he listed more than 400 VHS tapes and 1,600 DVDs that he said they had thrown out.
US district judge Paul Maloney ruled in favor of Werking who said his parents had no right to throw out his collection.
He had returned home for 10 months in 2016 after a divorce before moving to Muncie, Indiana.
But he noticed a dozen boxes of VHS tapes, DVDs, magazines and sex toys worth an estimated $25,000 were missing when they sent his possessions to his new address.
The parents kept some of the pornography, which they described as ‘the worst of the worst’, in a safety deposit box out of concerns it could be illegal.
Police reviewed the X-rated material and found no evidence of illegality and no charges resulted from it.
They then threw it away. In one email, his father Paul said to him: ‘I do not possess your pornography. It is gone.
‘It has been either destroyed or disposed of. I may well have missed a few items that are now in your possession but, at this point, if you don’t have it, it is gone.
‘Ditto for your sex toys and smutty magazines.
Judge Maloney said: ‘There is no question that the destroyed property was David’s property.
‘Defendants repeatedly admitted that they destroyed the property.’
‘Defendants do not cite any statute or case law to support their assertion that landlords can destroy property that they dislike,’ the judge said.
‘The court does not intend to hold an evidentiary hearing,’ he said.
