Posted on 11/25/2007 6:31:07 PM PST by joanie-f
It sucks when you're on the losing side, but adverse possession claims are not the exclusive domain of the privileged class.
That was exactly the purpose of it. The purpose of the law is to ensure that a scare resource--land--is actually used for a beneficial purpose. Here, the owners sat on their thumbs for twenty years while someone else used the land. Guess they shouldn't have waited twenty years to build.
If the Kirlins had put a fraction of the effort they are exerting now into stopping the adverse possession for over 20 years, they wouldn’t be in this fix. Now it is much ado about nothing.
They apparently DID NOT sit on their thumbs for 20 years, and claims that they did are bogus.
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Happens all the time to squatters who know what they're doing.
Likewise if a landlord allows a tenant to reside in his property for ninety days without a lease agreement then the 'tenant' has the legal right to stay until legally evicted which can take years.
If your grown kid moves out, gets an apartment, takes a friend in as a room-mate then six months later wants to get rid of the room-mate he can't if the roomie won't go. Nor can the landlord tell the roomie to leave at the end of the lease.
Every lease I write has specific clauses that define clearly the allowable tenants by name and prohibits 'visitors' from staying for more than ten days without my written approval.
The world works the way it works, not they way we might want it to.
If they filed an ejectment or quiet title action against the judge, then I'll change my tune. Otherwise, given that the judge won his quiet title action, it seems to me that they sat on their thumbs.
Thank you for this essay, Joanie, I see it as one more brick in the road to revolution.
In truth, my own feeling is that the US has been on that road since the Supreme Court ruled that Corporations have the same Rights as A Man before the Bar of Justice. That single ruling, and the judicial policy of stare decisis has allowed for the socialist undermining of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Corporations, of necessity, are socialist in construct; they have a dictatorial hierarchy without which they could not function. Unfortunately by their standing the corporations are usurping the laws that granted them Powers, not Rights, as We, the People, granted Powers to our Governments.
Kelo was a wake-up call to the Joe and Jill Sixpack Nation, but because of the bread-and-circus lifestyle made obsequious by life's necessities, was one of very few rulings that showed the power that those we have granted Powers to have amassed to our detriment. Our Citizenship has been steadily undermined with lesser rulings, many counter to the true meaning and clear proscriptions of the Constitution, that we no longer live in the land that our Forefathers bequeathed us. I believe it was Ben Franklin who remarked: "A Republic, if you can keep it."
It appears that we no longer have the means or will to regain our true Republic, and I fear for the coming storm that will drive our children back into serfdom.
Apologies for the non-response to many of the thoughtful posts here since late last night. Will be back this afternoon to try to respond to a few of them.
Your good sentiments are misplaced on this factual situation. There is no corruption or usurpation of power here — just a routine and apparently very well founded adverse possession case.
This judge deserves the same fate as the judge who sued the dry cleaners over his lost pants.
Ownership and the rights pertaining to them also have liabilities levied by local, state, and federal laws and regulations. If the neighbors claim adverse possession, they also had a responsibility to abide by those same laws and regulations regarding the land they possessed.
The laws of adverse possession are not laws intended to give criminals an opportunity to steal property from their neighbors when the property rights were not being enforced. They are intended to address real situation where two parties and real property is involved, where the proper owner of the property fails to make any use of that property and another is able to make use of the property but not yet formally recognized as the owner.
An honest and honorable man seeking ownership by adverse possession would also have made numerous attempts to treat the property as his own and lived up to those civic responsibilities. He also would have attempted to purchase the land fairly from the proper owners.
I suspect the judge and lawyer couple are guilty of fraud, but not enough information is provided in the article.
If the owner’s historical payment of taxes doesn’t reflect their responsible ownership, then the pathway adjacent the owner’s house has even less value to a righteous judge.
Oh Good Grief. My parents are middle class and they owned their land for over 20 years they currently live on before building a home. Yea people used the land. They used it to walk the creek bank and fish and some hunted on it as well. Finally their monetary situation allowed them to build a home now worth about $200,000 or $30,000 back in 1968.
Who are you to tell anyone how soon they should build? The land I live on was owned and untouched for ten years before I finally got the funds to build on. Lucky for me it's land that no scumbag would likely take as it is a steep ridge side. But then again there is greedy trash among us these days who would love to grab anyone elses property they didn't pay for by any means possible. Such trash as that usually preys on the elderly as well. They call themselves caretakers of the land wink wink.
If this ends up with the judge and his wife in possession of the land and then it was found that a nasty radioactive spill that cost millions to clean up had occurred on the land they took, would they have to fork over the money themselves to clean it up or would they try to sue the previous owners for non-disclosure of the condition? Just asking... (I think I know what these two lowlifes would do.)
The "system" is broken and it can't get up.
A litany of things. If you lack the intuition to comprehend such basics and are so violently willed as to deny the rights of others, no amount of listing them will even spark a glimmer of righteousness in your thinking.
Since you indicate a knowledge of the issue, perhaps you could list yourself what the judge (both of them) have done wrong.
I suspect though, that you have scarred your thinking to the point that even if you wanted to list them, you would lack the discipline to conceive them.
Not to worry though, until you suffer the first death, it is still possible for you to find righteousness, simply by placing a smidgeon more faith than absolutely no faith whatsover in what God provides through faith in Christ.
By “judge,” do you mean the judge who tried the case, or the former judge who was one of the plaintiffs? If the former, what did the the trial judge do that was wrong?
They had other options. As I've pointed out repeatedly, they could have filed an ejectment action. They didn't. It really doesn't seem like they did anything. They just sat there while the judge used it.
Let this be a lesson to those folks that don't tend to their property.
I meant the judge who lost his pants.......it was a frivolous law suit.
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