Posted on 12/06/2007 6:07:01 AM PST by Nevadan
Howard Hawks' "Red River" isn't just any Western. It was the last movie playing in the small-town Texas theater in the Peter Bogdanovich/Cybill Shepherd film (from the Larry McMurtry novel) "The Last Picture Show." It was Montgomery Clift's first -- and many say John Wayne's best -- film.
And how does novelist Borden Chase's quintessential American tale of the first great post-Civil War cattle drive begin? Wayne's Tom Dunson and Clift's Matt Garth start one of the great Texas cattle herds with one bull and one cow and all the land between the Red River and the Rio Grande -- land which they simply grab.
Two Mexican pistolleros show up, early in the film, to tell the man and boy they can camp on the land while they pass through, but they can't stay, because the land belongs to a wealthy Mexican who lives far to the south.
"That's too much land for one man," Wayne declares. One of the men says it's his job to deal with such attitudes. Wayne cements his claim by killing him.
But things have changed since 1851. You can't grab a nice-looking piece of land in America today just because the owner has left it vacant.
Or can you?
In 1984, Don Kirlin, a commercial airline pilot, and his wife, Susie, a former teacher, bought two adjacent lots on the southern edge of Boulder, Colo. They live in a home a short distance away, but hoped to build their dream house on the land. They frequently walked their dogs past their property. They report they never saw any sign anyone was using it.
Nor did they think to worry about such a thing, Ms. Kirlin told the Los Angeles Times. After all, they paid their property taxes and homeowner fees. They sprayed for noxious weeds and repaired fences.
Unbeknownst to the Kirlins, however, for more than 20 years a retired judge named Richard McLean and his lawyer wife, Edith Stevens -- occupants of the house next door to the vacant lots -- systematically trespassed on the Kirlins' land.
They planted a garden and stacked their firewood there, the Times reports. They held parties there.
In 2006, Richard McLean and Edith Stevens went to court, claiming the land they had never bought was actually theirs under Colorado's adverse possession law, once known as "squatters' rights."
In October, Boulder District Judge James C. Klein ruled the couple had demonstrated that their attachment to the land was "stronger than the true owners' attachment." He awarded Mr. McLean one-third of the lot, worth about $1 million.
The wealthy squatters may have won in a court of law, but they have not fared so well in the court of public opinion, even in the famously left-leaning university town of Boulder.
Internet bloggers ridiculed Mr. McLean and Ms. Stevens as land-grabbers who used their knowledge of the law to steal from an unsuspecting neighbor. In November, more than 200 people flocked to the property, where they hoisted signs with slogans such as "Thou shall not steal" while shouting "shame" and "thief" at the McLean-Stevens home, according to the Rocky Mountain News.
The doctrine of adverse possession isn't new or obscure. But it's usually applied to rights of way. If your parents and grandparents allowed the neighbors to access their property or walk to a popular bathing beach across your property, you may have forfeited your right to fence off that path.
But to grab a chunk of land away from a taxpaying neighbor by the simple expedient of a woodpile and some tomato plants? And the court won't even ask why they didn't approach the owner with an offer to buy?
What should the Kirlins have done to protect their property rights -- hunted out every squash vine, burned their lots down to black stubble every year?
There's no longer a right to buy land, pay taxes on it, and hold it in hopes of seeing it increase in value?
The Kirlins vow to appeal. The courts should consider carefully. For if this ruling stands, property owners are in effect being advised that the courts won't enforce their titles, leaving them only one solution: A couple guys with big hats, jangling spurs and Walker Colts, smiling and explaining, "You are welcome to camp on this land for a day or two as you're passing through. But you cannot stay."
Ah, the roar of .44s in the twilight. If the courts won't protect our property rights, some just might resort to older ways.
This is not the only crazy law in Colorado.
Not to hijack the thread but as to 'Red River': I love the movie but its so historically and anachronistically wrong, now that I'm older and wiser I shudder a bit when watching it. (but a lot of Westerns are like that)
If you go down to a local court house and look at the tax maps, particularly ones which have not been updated lately, you can find parcel of land which aren’t recorded on the deeds.
Indeed! Maybe that's the way to deal with this thieving judge and his scumbag lawyer wife....
And why does the editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal think that the Libs are so keen to take away our firearms?
Yes, and the scenery against which the action is shot is completely inappropriate for the supposed setting of the story.
I would think that the Kirlins paying property taxes on that land and the county accepting that payment would be enough under common law to establish interest in and ownership of the land.
A neighbor planting tomatoes and drinking a six pack on the land is not enough to maintain a claim of adverse possession.
The article also mentioned the Kirlins maintained a fence. That’s as good as a no trespassing sign under our common law.
Boulder District Judge Morris Sandstead, who served with McLean, issued the restraining order quite swiftly.
Serendipity, I guess.
the law is not basically the same in most states. the law in California, for example, says that the adversse possessor must pay the property taxes.....that is a significant difference.
“Law & Order” is just the name of a TV show. We are under the “rule of man” and whichever one has the money, power and influence rolls over the other guy. And it’s going to get darker.
This case was terribly mismanaged. If I were the land owner, things would have been settled outside the courtroom. (big grin)
Considering the filming locations I guess so.
Elgin, Arizona, USA
Nogales, Sonora, Mexico
Samuel Goldwyn/Warner Hollywood Studios
San Pedro River, Arizona, USA
Tucson, Arizona, USA
Whetstone Mountains, Arizona, USA
But John Ford may have been the biggest abuser of 'wrong' locations, he loved Monument Valley maybe a tad much.
Las Vegas editorial on the Kirlins. Good stuff
Adverse possession goes back to English common law, and every state has it in one form are the other.
Edith Stevens is a former chair of the Boulder County Democrats. She and her husband are quite close with the Judge who allowed the adverse possession; the Judge did not recuse himself from the case despite being close friends with these land thieves.
Yes and the fence wasn't built on the property line, the judge gave them the property to the fence.
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