The Beastie Boys song “Fight For Your Right” is essentially a stereotype at this point, inserted into movies or TV shows where parents just don’t understand. The Licensed To Ill classic has inspired countless scenes of teenage tomfoolery, but it seems at least one lyric from the song has become a real thing that inspired a real lawsuit in Michigan. Several reports out of the gloved state detail a suit between a man who alleges his parents threw out his collection of pornography.
Full credit goes to MLive here for writing a Beastie Boys-inspired headline here. But it’s also a bit too on the nose, which is why it’s a good thing that the Detroit Free Press also covered it, so we know this is a real thing that happened. A 42-year-old man, David Werking, recently won a lawsuit he filed against his parents for throwing out his [Beastie Boys voice] “best porno mag” as the result of a dispute in the home where they all lived.
The MLive story described the case against Beth and Paul Werking as the judge did, who said his parents should not have tossed out “a trove of pornography and an array of sex toys”:
“This was a collection of often irreplaceable items and property,” Greengard said.
His client had moved into his parents’ home in late 2016 after a divorce. After he left for Muncie, Indiana, he expected them to deliver his belongings. He later realized that a dozen boxes of pornographic films and magazines were missing.
His father said in an email: “Frankly, David, I did you a big favor getting rid of all this stuff.”
The judge earlier rejected the parents’ request to dismiss the case.
Werking claims he’s owed $25,000 in damages, which is a lot of smut. But the case itself is very weird, to say the least. Apparently the “incident” stems from a 2017 matter where the parents asked Werking to leave the home for at least three days. According to the judge’s ruling, he tried to contact his parents and get back his illicit materials, but they weren’t happy about him even having all that porn in the first place:
The parents said they had told their son when he moved in that he could not bring pornography into their home or it would be destroyed. They also contended he had abandoned the property and said he could have mitigated his losses by removing it himself.
The judge said the parents would not allow him back and that they said they would ship his property to him.
The parents had kept some materials, described as the “worst of the worst,” in a safety-deposit box, concerned it could be illegal.
Authorities apparently reviewed the material to check for anything illegal like child pornography, and came up with nothing incriminating. Which must have been a very weird trip to the bank but, hey, a job’s a job.
(Via MLive)