A judge has ordered a Michigan couple to pay their son $45,000 for throwing out his collection of pornographic material. The decision from US
District judge Paul Maloney came eight months after 43-year-old David Werking
won a lawsuit against his parents.

In his lawsuit, Werking said his parents had
no right to throw away his collection of films, magazines and other items, which
he then said were worth $29,000, the Associated Press reported. In addition the $30,441 the collection was valued at, the judge also ordered Werking’s parents to pay his attorney
$14,500.

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Werking lived in his parent’s house in Grand
Haven for 10 months following a divorce. He then moved to Muncie in Indiana. It
was after he moved that he learned his parents had cleared out the boxes
that contained all his films and magazines.

In an email, Werking’s father told him, “Frankly,
David, I did you a big favour getting rid of all this stuff”.

“There is no question that the destroyed
property was David’s property. Defendants repeatedly admitted that they
destroyed the property,” Judge Maloney said in his ruling last December.

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Werking’s parents argued they had a right to
act, as they were acting as their son’s landlords.

“Defendants do not cite to any statute or
caselaw to support their assertion that landlords can destroy property that
they dislike,” the judge responded.

He had ordered both sides to file briefs on
the financial value of the collection. “The court does not intend to hold an
evidentiary hearing,” he said.

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The judge followed the value of the collection
as estimated by an expert, AP cited MLive.com as reporting. A defence-hired
expert in pornograophy valuation, Dr Victoria Hartmann, determined the value of
the collection at $30,441.54, which the parents were ordered to pay.

Hartmann could not provide the value of 107 titles
on the Werking’s collection. “However, given the wide range of valuations for
individual pieces and the inability of Dr. Hartmann to even estimate the value
of these pieces, the Court declines to use an average value to award damages
for these titles,” the judge said.