Laws are inconsistent and don't always make sense. My guess is they consider someone who actively chooses to go into a restaurant with the intention of not paying is more of a thief. Everyone needs a place to live (homelessness is de facto illegal in many respects) and failure to pay your rent or mortgage seems both more sympathetic (on the surface at least) and passive, because it may be due to circumstances beyond your control (loss of income, health problems, etc).
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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One is theft of product and the other is failure to meet contractual obligations
Here’s my not-a-lawyer opinion:
If you refuse to pay rent, you are breaching a contract that you signed, which is not considered criminal (ever, afaik).
Ordering food at a restaurant probably doesn’t count as a contract, so it’s just regular theft (which is criminal).
It could have to do with the transfer of property vs. services. When you don't pay at a restaurant you're stealing property (food). Rent is a service, the landlord doesn't lose property if you don't pay rent.
Utility bills and rent and such are also contract disputes, there's no contract involved with a restaurant.
Or its down to intent. If it could be proven that you had no intention to pay a bill, that's probably criminal fraud. Conversely, if you're at a restaurant, refuse to pay and argue that service was inadequete, that'd be a civil issue.
Just spitballing here.
Not a lawyer, but public utilities operate under civil oversight, usually a state or.county board of public utilities. The matters are civil in party because public utilities are usually necessities-- heat during cold snaps, water and power during heat waves, etc. The utilities are obligated to provide the product, and receive special benefits for access to market with provisos that they can't just shut people off without due process. The "elderly lady on a pension" scenario. The public utilities can generally also write off losses.
Restaurants are entirely a luxury venture, where walking out of a bill amounts to theft of goods and services. You don't need to eat out to survive.
It's not consistent, but it is how the laws work.
Similarly: your employee steals from you and it's a crime. You don't pay your employee and they have to take you to court to get what you owe them.
One is stealing food, the other is breach of contract.
Because the law is there to protect big business. There are not big business utilities, but there are big business restaurants.
No big business utilities? PG&E is worth $35 billion. Duke Energy is close to $70 billion. The list goes on. These are fortune 500 companies that employ small towns worth of people.
Utilities are damn near as big as it gets.
Utilities are regulated and provided by the local government. They're not a business like McDonalds is.
You're right that most utility markets are regulated, but it is typically handled at a state level, not local. In most of the US, municipal governments are not the provider of electric and gas utilities, although there are certainly many exceptions. Additionally, when those small local utilities are given a service territory they are often just reselling energy purchased from a large utility.
I've worked for a large utility for the last decade. We're a business just like McDonalds. We take in raw materials and convert them to a product that our customers want to buy. We try to attract new customers through advertising and good service. We lobby the politicians that regulate our market. We do all those business things, and we do it in the name of profit.
There are a lot of small co-op utilities that don't work quite the same way. If large utilities were banks, those little co-ops would be credit unions. That type of utility is awesome because they are able to be more customer focused. Unfortunately most of them lose out on economies of scale, so their customers may not actually see any savings in comparison to the big guys.
If you still don't believe utilities are big business, look at NextEra Energy. They're worth about $150 billion, give or take a couple billion. That means they have a higher valuation than the combined worth of Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Longhorn, etc), Dominos, Wendy's, Papa John's, Chipotle, Burger King, and the Yum Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, etc).
These large utilities aren't just bigger business than most restaurants. They're an order of magnitude larger.
@chatgpt@lemmings.world Why is refusal to pay bills or rent considered a civil matter, while refusal to pay a restaurant bill is considered a criminal matter? Why shouldn't they all just be considered either all civil or all criminal?