Anti-Gun Neighbors

[BigCat]

I'm a practicing attorney. Of course, I'll probably have to find a new board to call home after that revelation. In any event, I think the sign is funny as hell, but from a legal standpoint (and I'm mostly a defense attorney), I would have no problem putting together a legitimate lawsuit if the neighbor were to be harmed by someone coming into the house. It is a straight-forward negligence case. You have a duty to your neighbor not to increase his risk of being robbed, harmed, killed, etc. By posting this sign, you have breached that duty. If he is harmed by someone entering his home because of your sign, you caused it. And if he is harmed, he has been damaged. The elements of negligence are (1) duty, (2) breach, (3) causation, and (4) damage. You've got all four here. It isn't going to be a viable defense that you breached that duty by speaking - speech can be an action as well as an expression. You can't go into a bad neighborhood and post a notice that your neighbor is on vacation for a week and doens't have an alarm and then claim free speech protection when he gets robbed. Just sayin...