WTF?! A man has won a legal battle against his wife by using footage from a robot vacuum to prove she was having an affair, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Because he secretly filmed her, he was fined around 30% of the roughly $16,000 he won and sentenced to five months in prison.
The man in Taiwan used the robot vacuum to gather evidence of his wife's extramarital affair for a civil lawsuit against her, writes the South China Morning Post.
His suspicions arose in late 2023, when he discovered a used toothbrush at the holiday home. He then checked surveillance footage from a garage and identified an unknown man who had previously driven his wife home.
It seems catching his wife in the act was an accident. Three months later, the man remotely activated their robot vacuum cleaner via its mobile application. He was planning to use it to communicate with her. Instead, his suspicions were confirmed by the vacuum's live video feed, so he decided to record everything.
The video showed the woman changing clothes, embracing the man who appeared in the previous video, and walking around the house naked while he lounged on the sofa.
The husband later used the footage to sue his wife and the man for infringement of spousal rights under Taiwan's civil law, seeking $68,000. The court found in his favor, determining that the wife's relationship with the other man had surpassed the limits of ordinary friendship, though the husband was awarded the much lower sum of around $16,000.
Things were about to get much worse for the husband. His wife countersued him for recording private, intimate footage of her without consent. She added that the sensors and lights on the vacuum weren't sufficient warning that she was being filmed.
He tried to argue that the footage had been accepted by the civil court and his actions were legally justified, but the court didn't agree. It determined that what he did was still illegal, deliberate, and that marital obligations do not supersede an individual's right to privacy.
The court fined the man NT$150,000 (about $4,741) and sentenced him to five months in prison. He actually avoided the worst-case scenario of an NT$300,000 (around $9,500) fine and three years behind bars.
With the fine deducted from his award, the man has been left with just over $11,000 and is facing nearly half a year in jail. Some on social media are angry with the court's decision, while others say there are no excuses for breaking the law.