St. Thomas Aquinas — as did St. Augustine and Martin Luther King Jr. — maintained that an unjust law is no law at all. It makes sense. Law and justice are supposed to go together like sweetness and honey.
Liberals — abandoning reason to claim a false moral high ground higher than God’s — routinely subvert justice in a grotesque attempt at moral posturing.
Just ask 70-year-old Jean de Segonzac, a television director and screenwriter who purchased a home in Bellport, New York.
According to the U.S. Sun, de Segonzac found a perfect home to accommodate his 32-year-old daughter, who uses a wheelchair. It was nothing too fancy, a $600,000 ranch-style affair with ground access to several rooms.
There were some structural issues with the house that had to be dealt with before the family could move in. Permits for renovation take time so de Segonzac had all the utilities turned off while he waited for bureaucracy to run its course.
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Three weeks later, de Segonzac got a bill from the water company. Wondering why the water hadn’t been cut off as he requested, de Segonzac called the utility. The company informed him it couldn’t turn off the water. Why? Because someone was living there.
According to Aquinas, the only way an unjust law can be followed is when it is obvious that disobeying it would lead to evils worse than obeying it. I don’t know if de Segonzac is familiar with Aquinas or MLK, but he acted accordingly. Rather than losing his cool, he went to his house to assess what was going on. Surely there was some kind of mistake.
To his surprise, a man opened the door when de Segonzac knocked, according to the Sun. Even more surprising, the man presented de Segonzac with an official-looking lease.
Upon further investigation, de Segonzac learned that four adults, two children and a dog were living in his house. They had a big-screen TV, furniture and a giant aquarium. Welcome to the world of the modern-day squatter.
Should squatters ever have any right to a property?
“My family was in a very dark place,” de Segonzac told Newsday. “And it was a long time before we saw light at the end of the tunnel.”
What to do? Being a law-abiding citizen, de Segonzac called the police, according to the Sun. He found out that one of the men in his house had a criminal record and had done the same kind of thing before.
He also learned the police couldn’t evict the people living in his house without a court order.
“I was devastated,” de Segonzac told Newsday.
That’s not all de Segonzac learned. If a squatter has been on a homeowner’s property for less than 30 days, they can be removed as a trespasser, according to the Sun. Once those 30 days have passed, the person is considered a tenant.
If that’s not crazy enough, squatters are handed more rights if they undertake home improvements and the like. That’s the law in New York, according to Newsday. The homeowner isn’t allowed to lock a squatter out once they are settled in or they are presumably breaking the law. The homeowner can’t turn off the utilities and the squatter can’t be evicted on account of not having a legitimate lease.
The squatter told de Segonzac that he and his family would move out. They didn’t.
An absurd law is an unjust law. When squatters have more rights than homeowners it is absurd.
Reason, however, prevailed in de Segonzac’s case — it always does but it can be a very slow process.
Matthew Petheram, the architect behind the renovation of de Segonzac’s home, called in city officials due to the home’s dilapidated state, according to the Sun. “Bellport is pretty close-knit and they were upset this was happening in their community,” he said.
Inspectors were sent to the house and found black mold in the basement. Black mold is a health hazard. Because there was no certificate of occupancy, the property was condemned.
The squatters weren’t giving up. They tried to remove the “Condemned” signs posted on the property. It didn’t work and they were forced to move.
Understandably shaken up by the experience, de Segonzac wanted to gut the home to make sure the squatters wouldn’t return. Petheram — a very reasonable man — suggested offering the property to the fire department for training drills. De Segonzac — a reasonable man himself — agreed.
Over the next few weekends, firefighters effectively destroyed the doors, windows and roof of the house.
“They pretty much made it 100 percent uninhabitable,” said Petheram. There was nothing left to do but bulldoze the house.
De Segonzac is now helping others by getting the word out about how easily squatters in New York can take over your life. It’s almost a common occurrence.
Even in a state where unjust laws are common — a world gone mad — reason will eventually prevail.
