Judge Rules Parents Owe Son $30K for Throwing Away His Porn
Living with your parents as an adult can be challenging for a multitude of reasons. It takes compromise and more than a little patience to make it work. For the parents of David Werking, who recently won a lawsuit against his parents after they threw away his extensive porn collection, it's also proving to be an expensive situation.
Local Michigan publication MLive reports that Werking's parents owe their son $30,441 in damages for what U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney of Kalamazoo, Michigan deemed “a trove of pornography and an array of sex toys.” They disposed of the racy keepsakes after he moved back in with them following a divorce in late 2016. Maloney has also ordered the puritanical parents to pay Werking's attorney $14,519.
Although that's already a hefty sum, the younger Werking was actually seeking more. In fact, he was after up to three times the initial sum, which was determined by pornography valuation expert Dr. Victoria Hartmann.
Werking provided a $25,000 value to the court but chose to seek treble damages, which would allowed him to ask for up to three times the amount of the valuation. Werking and his lawyer upped the ante since they claimed it would be impossible to replace a good portion of the collection. Furthermore, they alleged that his parents' actions led to the "wanton destruction of property."
Maloney's decision regarding damages comes well after the court case was initially decided.
AP reports that Werking won the suit in December 2020. “There is no question that the destroyed property was David’s property,” Maloney said at the time. He also made it very clear that the elder Werkings owned up to trashing the stash. “Defendants repeatedly admitted that they destroyed the property.”
His parents argued that it was within their rights as landlords to get rid of what they seemingly deemed offensive materials. However, Maloney said they never provided legal precedent to back that argument up in court. They also appeared unrepentant about their decisions.
“Frankly, David, I did you a big favor getting rid of all this stuff," Werking's father wrote in an email shared by MLive.