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The Judge Who Ruled Children Have A Legal Right To Retrieve Balls From Neighbors’ Yards
A cranky home owner who tried to keep baseballs that rolled on to his property got a surprise when his case went to court
Something that has happened an incredibly high number of times throughout history is when children are playing some sort of ball game outdoors and their ball accidentally lands in the yard of a neighbor. Most often, there is no problem with retrieving the toy and resuming play, but every now and then the property owners who have had their lawn encroached upon have been less than pleasant, or even refused to return the item. However, one Chicago judge nearly a century ago laid such disputes to rest once and for all for that community, officially ruling that children had a legal right to go and get their ball if it somehow landed in somebody else’s property.
The June 2, 1929 issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the story of 56-year-old Chicago, Illinois resident Conrad Thor, who had been charged with larceny when he refused to return a baseball that had rolled into his yard located in the Oak Park suburb. He provided testimony that balls coming on to his property from neighborhood children was a routine occurrence. Furthermore, he claimed that not only had it become…
