A man in Akron, Ohio, paid two dollars for a bus ride last Tuesday and inadvertently became the central figure in what transit officials are now calling a "jurisdictional gray area." His crime?
According to a 47-page complaint filed by the regional transit authority, the bench in question sits eleven inches inside a property line shared with a private parking lot.
The bus system says neither of them can prove it, so everyone should just calm down and let people sit.
Our hero, identified in court documents only as "Passenger 14," missed his bus during the argument.
The bus driver reportedly refused to open the door because a supervisor told him not to "interfere with an active bench dispute." Passenger 14 stood up to argue.
The bench, now unoccupied, was immediately claimed by a pigeon.
The pigeon has not been named as a party to the lawsuit, though its lawyer is presumably a hawk.
Local news interviewed a woman named Denise who waits at that stop every morning. "I've been sitting on that bench for six years," she said. "Now I find out I might be a squatter?
I don't even own a tent." The transit authority released a statement clarifying that the bench remains operational and that riders "should continue to use it as normal, unless a lawyer is present." No one knows what that means, including the person who wrote it.
Meanwhile, the parking lot owner has installed a sign that reads "PRIVATE BENCH — NO BUS PEOPLE." Legal experts say this is not a real category of person under Ohio law, but they also admit Ohio law is weird about benches.
Passenger 14, for his part, has started a GoFundMe to buy the bench outright.
It's raised $83, mostly from people who think the whole thing is funny and one guy who thought he was donating to a different bench.
The city council plans to discuss the matter at a meeting next month, assuming they can agree on which room to hold it in.
The real losers here are the commuters, who just want a place to sit while they wait for a bus that may or may not stop eleven inches to the left.
In America, you can't even rest your legs without triggering a property dispute and a pigeon takeover.
Final Thoughts
The bench will probably end up in a museum, and the rest of us will keep standing.