"To me, what just came out of it is, you can't win, you can't fight the government," landowner Ceil Barrie said Wednesday.
She and her husband, Andy, owned ten acres of land perched at 11,000 feet elevation in Breckenridge. The property, with breathtaking views, was a private patch of land surrounded by White River National Forest.
An old, uninhabited day-use cabin, an outhouse and a shuttered gold mine sit on it. The Barries’ legal troubles began when they worked to access their personal paradise with a utility vehicle. They traveled on an old mining road dating back to the 1880s and said the county did not even know about the road until they made them aware of it.
The county asked to buy the land, but the Barries did not want to part with their piece of "Colorado heaven."
So Summit County condemned it, filed for eminent domain and petitioned for immediate possession.
They had a crap or collusive lawyer to lose that.
Also, they should have kept their mouth shut about the road, though if it was through the national forest they could claim it was utilized as a prospecting road.
Eminent domain can only be used to acquire land for a public need. And you have to be paid fair compensation for what the government wants.
Lesson here is don’t tell the gubmint bout nothin.