I don't understand why there has been so much community support for Peter van der Linde. [January 28: "Freed Van der Linde; Govt drops suit against recycler "].
According to news reports and his own words in local radio interviews, his reason for not paying a $16-per-ton fee on trash from Charlottesville and Albemarle County at the Zion Crossroads transfer station was not that he didn't know there was a fee, but rather that he wasn't asked to identify those loads so he could be assessed the fee.
When did it become honorable for a purchaser (of a service, in this case) to avoid paying known fees just because the service provider didn't specifically ask the right question when it was time to pay?
Let's apply this kind of reasoning to a mother at a grocery store who gives her hungry child a banana to eat while she's shopping. When she gets to the register and the cashier doesn't ask about the banana peel in the cart, is it okay for the mother to just walk out of the store without paying for the banana that she knows full well requires payment?
Mr. van der Linde's reasoning seems morally deficient, illicit in nature, and not at all logical. I'm stunned that so many people would support his actions privately, let alone publicly.
Marlene Condon
Crozet
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