Scrooge was “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner” but to date, I never could figure what laws he might have broken on his journey through Christmas past, present, and future to become less of a pain in Victorian London’s collective bum. Maybe I just wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe it was a lack of knowledge of English commercial law. Then, I had an idea … an awful, wonderful idea. Maybe it isn’t Scrooge I needed to look at, maybe it was those darn ghosts.

Jacob Marley: Vandalism Marley was dead: to begin with.

Marley, Scrooge’s former business partner, kicks off the story by materializing as the doorknocker on Scrooge’s front door. Once he realizes the apparition is not the result of a lower GI tract upset, Scrooge comes to understand he will be visited by three specters which will, if he listens to their counsel, save him from Marley’s fate of bumping about the earth tied forever to chains of the material wealth he sought during life.

What can we possibly accuse Marley of? Let’s save the emotional distress discussion for the really scary ghosts, Marley is but a harbinger. I would say the best action we have here is a bit of destruction of property or vandalism. He does mess with a very nice brass doorknocker, after all.

Ghost of Christmas Past: Kidnapping “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” “Long Past?” inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature. “No. Your past.”

Scrooge is awakened by this first spirit and led to the window, where he will be forced to leap back into his past. He wants to resist the spirit’s command, but cannot. Let’s trot out a definition of kidnapping here, defined by U.S. law as the taking of a person from one place to another against his or her will. Scrooge certainly doesn’t want to make this leap, even though it ends in a visit to Fezziwig, the scene of one of his happiest memories. In the end, he is released back to his chambers, but that matters not. He was forced to “go” against his will which is, transparently, a kidnapping.

Finis Part I. Come back for Part II.

Related Resources:

  • Find Legal Representation for Criminal Ghosts (FindLaw’s Directory)Accused of Vandalism: How to Bring a Defense (FindLaw’s
  • Blotter)The Grinch Who Stole Your Identity: Avoiding Holiday Identity
  • Theft (FindLaw’s Technologist)NY
  • Gov. Paterson Pulls A Scrooge, Pulls Money from Schools (FindLaw’s Law and
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