Sometimes you find yourself in a sticky situation where doing the right thing involves bending the rules a little bit or even breaking the law. It's a sign of ethical intelligence to know when to throw rules and laws by the wayside in hopes of actually helping someone or saving a life.
Hopefully, the powers that be recognize that laws can actually obstruct justice in some cases, but there's a fine line between compassionate people and bureaucratic sticklers. Whether it's rehoming a dog that's being horribly abused, or sliding freebies to those less fortunate, sometimes it's good to be a little bad. Here are some of Reddit users' craziest yet most justifiable stories about doing illegal things for the right reasons.
They Actually Wanted To Press Charges Over Donated Candy
About two months later, I was called into the head office. They had me on video putting the candy in my car. They told me I owed them $500 in damages or they would press charges. I got a lawyer and argued that dumpster diving isn’t illegal in my area, which since I was told to throw it away is what I did. In the end, I was fired and banned from the store, but the charges were dropped.”
He Just Wanted To Make Sure His Mother Was Alright
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“I woke up one night to my mother screaming bloody murder. A week prior she was involved in a work accident (ironically she works at the hospital) where a crazy patient lifted her up and dropped her on the corner of a desk. Nothing broke, but the bruising was so bad and intense she’d formed internal clots and was at risk of a big one breaking up and running through her circulatory system.
The night she woke up screaming, well, it happened, and she was in a ton of pain. My old man was carrying her to the car and told me to get her to the hospital ASAP. Before I even got out of the driveway, my mother was losing her mind from a combination of pain and worry. Her worry was that one of the many clots that were stuck would make it to her brain or heart, and that was all it took to make me drive 100 mph through every red light on the way to the hospital.
I ultimately ended up with four red light camera tickets and a cop trying to pull me over in the last block before the hospital. The officer was nice enough to let me go, seeing as how I pulled into the emergency side of the hospital and was scrambling for a wheelchair before he had a chance to say hello. The bureaucracy still made me pay for the red light tickets.”
He Had A Nonaddictive Remedy For His Cousin
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“In high school (and after), I sold weed. I really only did it to have a perpetual supply of my own stash, but then it got to be more than I could ever smoke so I ended up dropping out my senior year to grow, sell, and supply because the money was good. I guess I didn’t start selling for the right reasons.
However, not too long after I dropped out, my younger cousin got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease around age 14-15. He went through the gamut of treatments and the last one was called Remicade. Remicade has some pretty bad side effects and his quality of life was pretty crap. He could hardly eat and when he did he vomited most of it up. During the first few months, he survived off of IV bags and orange juice. He had to drop out of school and start homeschooling, and even then he could hardly do his work.
After almost a year of the Remicade treatment, doctors started talking about surgery to remove multiple feet of his intestine and giving him a colostomy bag. I convinced my family that weed could actually help him. At that point, he was about 16-17 and I smoked with him for the first time. Not too long after his first three hits, he said he was hungry for the first time in nearly a year. We ordered pizza and he ate a whole medium pie by himself and went to bed without getting up in the middle of the night, which was rare for him. I stopped focusing on my ‘business’ and started focusing on sourcing products for him.
He has been in remission for almost two years now. I moved away to a different state, but I still ship him the goods. He can now get by on a low dose and it’s enough to keep the disease at bay. He’s also starting his first job soon! Plus medicinal weed is newly legal in his state, which it wasn’t when I started my operation.”
His Poor Dog Didn’t Deserve The Abuse It Received
“My last year of college, I moved into a house with two guys. One I knew really well and had lived with before, and the other guy I kinda knew. A few months before we moved in but after we signed a lease, the second guy, who I’ll call Al, bought a dog from a shelter. It was rude to get a dog without talking to us since we were then forced to live with a dog we never agreed to, but we let it go.
Well from day one, the guy was a crappy dog owner. He left the dog out on a chain all the time, he forgot to feed him, and he put the dog’s cage in the basement where there was no light source. One weekend, two months in, we all left and Al decided to leave the dog alone all weekend with no one to take care of him. I came home to piles of dog crap everywhere and a very hungry and sad dog. I fed the dog, took him on a walk, and called Al to tell him that he needed to get back and clean the place.
That night he got home while I was gone, beat the dog in the basement for forty-five minutes, and then locked it alone in the pitch black basement. He sent a text to me and our other roommate saying to not look at the dog, not let it out, and not interact with it at all. The next day, Al worked until eleven. A bad storm hit, so the other roommate and I took the dog to my parents’ house about an hour away.
When Al got home, I told him that I’d let the dog out and he ran away. Al tried to fight me, but our other roommate intervened. My mother took the dog to the vet where we learned that Al had busted an eardrum and caused permanent nerve damage in the dog’s face. We went to the police and Al was arrested and convicted of animal abuse. The dog still lives a fat, happy life with my parents where he steals my father’s side of the bed every night.”
They Never Even Reported Anything
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“One time I dropped by my addict tenants’ place to pick up a late rent check. I believe in second chances, but these two had been messing up at my expense for two years. They had three months left on the lease at that point and I wasn’t going to offer them a new one. Anyway, I knew the lady was about ready to have a baby the last time I’d seen them, but I was not ready for what I saw when I got there.
The door was wide open and the place was trashed. The parents were passed out, one on the couch, the other on the floor. Paraphernalia was everywhere. I found the baby in a car seat on the kitchen floor. There were flies and roaches everywhere, even on the baby, who was only a week or two old at most. The baby was obviously not well and was in a disgustingly old and dirty diaper with nothing else, practically stuck to the car seat.
I knew what I had to do, and I feel no remorse whatsoever for what I did, it was the right choice.