The legal purchasers and owners were keeping this land against the day when older that they could build on it. The theives were using it, tresspassing without permission and are now invoking this law so they can not only take the land for themselves, but keep these people who paid for the land, and who maintained their taxes on it for all those years (which, from the government's perspective should be construed and considered as productive...much more production for that land than what they have not gotten from the other party), from building on it.
These interlopers have not used it productively from a societal standpoint in the least and everyone knows it...they have tresspassed for their own purposes and interests and now a colleague is rewarding that tresspass with ownership, taking abject advantage of good people who were simply naive and unknowledgable about this law...something officers of the court by creed and ethical code are not supposed to do. (As if that mattered a whit these days...shameful)
It is a foul thing, it is an immoral thing, and it has nothing to do whatsoever with the public good or the productive use of land.
The people who bought it and were saving it for their retirement and ultimate home are the ones who have exhibited not only much more responsibility for that land, but have also done so in a wholly legal and upright manner...irespective of their being taken advantage of. To somehow paint their efforts and interest in this land as the "wrong" is simply turning the entire episode and affair completely upside down.
All legaleze aside, this is a plain, simple, straightforward wrong and "taking" as in theft to anyone applying common sense and conventional moral foundation to the episode rather than legaleze which would color outright theft as legal.
I will continue to contact anyone I can to try and help these people and right this wrong.