Of note is the case mentioned at the top of the article has been resolved. The defendants where found not-guilty of the charges of trespassing, and a related charge is expected to be dropped. [1]
No idea if this sets any sort of precedent. I suspect not, given how much of a quagmire all of this is.
When the solar eclipse happened a few years ago, my friend used the geo data from their company to compute BLM land which overlapped with the "path of totality", so that we could find a free camping spot from which we could experience the solar eclipse at it's most impressive. One of the constraints on his search was that the land also needed to be accessible from a public road, because the natives take these land rights very very seriously.
> because the natives take these land rights very very seriously.
This is likely because if they stop enforcing them, they can lose it. If they allow people access as a matter of course, after some time in many places this will create a public right to access, which they can no longer restrict. This creates a real, material loss to landowners.
You might want to finish TFA, as there are good reasons (as well as bad ones) listed further down. In short, people using public land apparently don't always stay on public land, and one rancher describes the negative effects of this. For example, people using private driveways for parking.
>people using public land apparently don't always stay on public land
Yes that is one of the bad reasons. Put up "private property" posts or similar. If you have such an enormous plot of private land that you cannot manage to enforce a stranger sticking their toe out onto it, and you for some reason really need to enforce to that extent-- that is on you. Consider scaling down your private property.
As for hunting on private property, that seems to a separate issue from the concept of landlocked public land. That's practically a guns issue. Anyway, that doesn't give private property owners dominion over public land.
You're conflating who needs to take care of that - if someone on public land doesn't stay on public land, when they are out they can be charged.
I don't see why you need to change the narrative to be "OH WOE IS ME, THEY TOUCHED THINE PUBLIC, but pissed on thine private a bit". That can be charged with evidence.
People MAYBE doing a crime is not a crime, and is a fucked up premise for you to persue, I'm disappointed in you.
I hate to break it to you - the govt can define walking paths and public lines.
It's going to be difficult to hold anything resembling a conversation with someone that seems to have missed the key points of the article, if it was read at all. Enjoy the rest of your day.
When they are out is literally "When they are in violation of the law" and you're sitting here saying here saying "WOW I CAN'T WAIT TO CHARGE THEM UNTIL THEY CRIME".
Do you want to fuck people up before they commit a crime? DO YOU WANT TO CHARGE TRESPASSING BEFORE THEY TRESPASS?
Several civil rights movements have logged in to see what happens next.
TFA specifically says, no, they are not able because resources are thin. One rancher is quoted as saying that if the enforcement problem were fixed, they wouldn't have a problem with corner-crossing.
It's an article worth reading, that's all I'm saying.
In Maine, great ponds are considered public and you must allow public access even if your land surrounds the water. This does not mean that you have the right to trample their farms or ride your dirt bike, but you must allow access at least by foot. I think this should be the model for all public land.
In the UK this principle applies even to private land in most cases. Not people’s back gardens, but if you own a large amount of land, they’ll almost always be public rights of way through it. And even where there’s not, you’ll usually be alright crossing it so long as you’re not making a nuisance of yourself.
The idea that so much land is privately owned and shut off to everyone else seems downright dystopian to me.
I'd say a rule that you can cross private land that's not in active use (built, fenced off, etc), but camping or hunting on that private land is not allowed (without permission), would sound quite reasonable to me.
I live within walking distance of a lake. We take frequent walks there. If I so much as touch the water with my big toe, I could get a ticket/citation. If I insist, I could be arrested. If I jump into the water (even wearing a floatation vest), same thing. You are only allowed to be in the water while lifeguards are present, and only for a few seconds if you fall off your paddleboard or something like that. If you are walking along the shore with water up to your ankles, lifeguard or not, you could be cited.
No, this is not a source of drinking water at all.
Every time I go to the lake I have the same thought: So much for "land of the free".
Note: Yes, of course, I understand this is mostly because people have sued and extracted money from the State/County, etc. That's likely the root cause. The solution isn't to ban everyone.
This makes zero sense to me. There are thousands of lakes in the Sierras that are on "state" or "county" or "federal" land. None of those are subject to the bizarre rules you posit. There must be something different about who actually owns/manages the lake you refer to? Or perhaps you are mistakenly under the impression that specific rules that exist for a particular beach you use for access(and accompanying watery recreational area) apply to the whole lake?
> Or perhaps you are mistakenly under the impression
Not the case. We've been using the lake for 25 years. I know most of the lifeguards, including the director of the department. They know me well because I used to get into the lake on my kayak with a dry-suit in full-blown Santa Ana winds. In other words, over the years, they came to understand it was unlikely they would have to rescue me or my kids.
Anyhow, one day I was there with my German Shepherds just hanging out, walking on the beech. The director of the lifeguards just happened to be on the patrol boat on duty that day. He came over to say hi and very clearly told me something akin to "You know, Martin, I could site you and even arrest you for getting your feet into the water anywhere in this lake". That led to something like "You have to be fucking kidding me". "No, I am not". And then we had a conversation.
He didn't like it any more than I did. Now that I remember, he did make mention of people drowning and lawsuits. I'm pretty sure that's the genesis of the regulation. While I can't find the rule in writing, I recall having seen a document with this information (this was probably 15 years ago).
>The director of the lifeguards just happened to be on the patrol boat on duty that day. He came over to say hi and very clearly told me something akin to "You know, Martin, I could site you and even arrest you
So long as the legal system allows leeches to extract money from the state because they slipped on a rock that was underwater, and so long as the county doesn't see any point in spending the resources to vigorously fight or counter-sue, yes that is unfortunately the only solution.
Why? And on what basis would people sue the state/county? If it's public land, shouldn't people simply be allowed to swim at their own risk? And do I understand correctly that paddleboarding is allowed? Because that really makes no sense.
People have drowned. Lawsuits have extracted millions of dollars. That's the best explanation I can offer.
Yes, paddleboards are allowed. Kayaks too. No power boats. Don't ask, I don't have the answers.
I can tell you I have seen people do truly stupid things on the lake. Like load-up a canoe with people and ice chests and go into the lake when they obviously have no clue what they are doing. We've been kayaking this lake for 25 years. I wear a vest every time. And I am an excellent swimmer with open water experience. If you don't respect water, you die, it's that simple.
Once you get to the point where everyone is a victim despite their stupidity, the only option left is to restrict absolutely everyone to the extent possible. That's the way I see this may have evolved. I don't know.
What a bizarre situation. It seems rather pointless for land to be public when it's not accessible by the public. Banning access to that land because of such a corner case seems quite unreasonable. But I also question why this checkerboard pattern was used to often when there was no rule to allow public access to the public lands between them. I've got to assume that such access must have been implicit.
Milli/Billis already use this to try to block public beaches as well - you get miles and miles of pristine beach access that the above-law money hoarders try to block access to.
And when they're called out on it? SLAPP type suits.
This is all about slapping down those who think money can alleviate law.
Public land doesn’t always mean land open to the public. In this case, we’re talking about recreational public land, but there are other types of public land where public use isn’t a factor.
Summary -- there are public lands in the US that supposedly belong to us all, but private landowners have literally "enclosed" them by encircling them with privately owned plots. It's legal to BE on the public land, but it's not legal to trespass on private land. So unless you can magically teleport onto the public land, you have to trespass to get there. This allows private landowners to effectively hoard public land for themselves even though they don't own it, because only they can access it.
The catch is "corner crossing" -- stepping diagonally OVER the property boundary from public land to public land, avoiding the ajoining private parcels. However, it's legally ambiguous in some areas whether you are violating the "air rights" of the private lands as your foot glides over them without ever actually setting foot on the dirt.
In Norway this would all be obviated by the "right to roam" law that states that anyone may move freely through privately owned land so long as:
> Summary -- there are public lands in the US that supposedly belong to us all, but private landowners have literally "enclosed" them by encircling them with privately owned plots. It's legal to BE on the public land, but it's not legal to trespass on private land. So unless you can magically teleport onto the public land, you have to trespass to get there
Just because I'm curious: could you parachute in? From a plane flying high enough to be in public airspace.
Cannot speak for this exact scenario, but generally in western and northern Europe (the only places I am familiar enough with) there doesn’t exist the culture of suing that the US has gained a reputation for - deserved or not.
In the west, there's a 'duty of care', in which you must keep your facilities reasonably safe, but typically the prerequisite is EITHER (A) implicitly inviting people onto your property or (B) specifically inviting people onto your property (via advertisement, word of mouth, etc). If this duty of care is breached and someone suffers injury because of that, the property owner can be sued for damages like medical expenses.
Scenario B is the most common scenario in that you shouldn't have to be worried about stepping on nails or tripping over things if you go to your local ikea.
Scenario A is more state-by-state, but at least in my state (Georgia), you can "imply invite" people onto your property for something as small as having an opening in a fence on your land, or a beaten pathway that seems to be frequented by dirt bikes - this is why 'no trespassing' signs are commonplace, so that you know that the property owner does not invite you onto their land and thus any injuries are at your own expense.
As a non-lawyer, I'd say they have no liability. As a landowner, I'd never personally chance it, but I would see if I could give a 6' portion of the land to the state/federal government.
Except that is not true, at all. You’d like it to be, logically, but if a trespasser (even if they are not aware they are) trips off a poorly maintained trail or an old rock wall, or etc … the landowner will be in court.
If it can happen when a thief breaks into your house and breaks his leg.. it can happen in the woods.
In the case I'm thinking of, where it's a large tract of vacant unimproved land, thats not true at all. There are no trails or rock walls to speak of. There's no house. It's just land. If you can find a case where this happened I'd love to read about it.
The idea that someone in the US walking along basically unmaintained paths in the woods that may be on private property will routinely sue somebody if they trip and break a bone is a trope that really needs to die. It's just idiocy and doesn't even fall in the man bites dog category but more in the man bites mountain lion category.
People who live in rural and semi-rural areas in the US are mostly pretty chill in general with people respectfully using their property, especially at the edges, in my experience.
I don’t think you could in general in the US either. If you grant someone easement you might have a duty to do basic things like not make concealed traps that could hurt them. Fear of litigation is just another excuse to keep land private.
It happens sometimes and I try and mostly succeed not to get too worried about it.
But this is definitely one of my pet theories as to the litigiousness of America - healthcare is exceptionally expensive and in theory someone gets stuck with the bill, so when someone (especially someone without insurance) gets injured the game begins.
I saw it personally on an uninsured friend who's arm bones were broken into pieces by a car wreck through no fault of his own. He was put back together pretty well, but to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.
There are other reasons to sue for injury, but it would be nice to think that they aren't so the injured person is able to escape bankruptcy from medical debt.
Yeah it seems like, it doesn't automatically solve all problems, but the comment made no such grand claims. I don't see how "take the wind out of a lot of injury suits" is even controversial.
> there are public lands in the US that supposedly belong to us all, but private landowners have literally "enclosed" them by encircling them with privately owned plots.
Bad summary. The private land owners didn't create this checkboard mess, the government did.
You and others are attributing ill intent to the landowners that I did not read in the article. While it is true they receive that benefit from this situation, they aren't the ones who created it. They didn't decide which land to make public and which to make private. They are simply playing the hand they've been dealt.
In this particular instance, they very much created the situation. The landowner called multiple law enforcement agencies until they found one that was willing to push it to prosecution, which the state lost.
Landowners own the land, but they can decide to not prosecute people "trespassing" over the corners (which, AFAIK, has no effect on their private land in any way whatsoever).
I'm sure most landowners aren't POS and most do not. But this guy did, and gave the hunters a big fine and a big legal challenge because they were in his "airspace" for no more than a couple minutes. Which is why we need a codified law, so hunters and campers don't even have to worry about this in the future.
The Montana rancher quoted in the article seemed to have a reasonable justification for it. I can't say I fully agree with him or that I'd press charges for it but he doesn't sound like he has ill intent. People firing guns and scaring his kids, trespassing deep into his land, parking in his driveway etc. And local law enforcement stretched thin and unable to respond consistently. So his position is basically I'm going to do everything I can to keep these people away from my property. That's understandable.
> Is there a scenario where pressing charges and a civil suit for corner crossing doesn't involve ill will?
This is what you asked me.
I think perhaps you intended to ask me something else.
The answer to that question is 'yes' and I gave you an example of such. Were the Montana rancher to press charges for corner-crossing, based on his stated reasoning, I don't think that would be ill will.
You didn't specific any restrictions on which situations apply or do not apply to your question.
I came to the defense of the truth. I read the whole article and I read nothing in it that would suggest the land owners have the ill intent that many attribute to them. It seems to be an assumption people quickly jump to but it's not in the article.
The article mentions one person with major ill intent:
The hunters who used a ladder to corner-cross in Wyoming now face a civil lawsuit from the owner of the private land whose airspace they stepped through, in addition to the original criminal trespass charge. Their criminal case, currently set for April 14th, will take place in a local court and therefore will not establish legal precedent. However, on March 31st, a judge ordered for their civil case (that is, the one brought by the landowner) to be moved to federal district court, where the outcome could serve as precedent in future cases. Whatever comes next, this legal gray area could very well remain clear as fog for decades to come.
I think you're making an assumption of ill intent. That or you're relying on information that is not in the quote you just provided. Pressing charges for using a ladder to corner-cross does not by itself indicate ill intent. At least to me. Why did they press charges for that? What was their intent in doing so?
Wow, now that's a case of paint^W checkering oneself into a corner.
OK, I can understand inaccessible public land; it's unpleasant but not directly infringing anyone's property rights. But how the owners of the private parcels within the checkerboard pattern even access their land? Passage through public land may be impossible because other private land stays in the way.
I suppose some agreements between land owners exist for passage. Similar agreements can likely apply to general public.
How did the original land planners miss the idea of having 15-20 ft of public land between private parcels, to allow building a road later on, escapes me. It's a great example of how little intellectual effort, even of the common-sense type, is often expended on questions of a colossal consequence.
I haven’t read the article, and maybe there is an answer there, but my immediate theory are easements. That is, the land is theirs but the owner of an adjacent property has the right to access their property through a defined corridor. Here in Washington state I know of some properties that even have public easements on them. Meaning that if their property blocks access to a public land, the public has the right to access that public land through a defined corridor.
The article explains how the explicit lack of such easements and corridors is causing problems.
Corridors and easements exist somewhere, and are discussed as a way out of the trap.
It's possible for an easement to exist for the owner of a private corner-locked parcel, but not for the public. Which would allow private owners legal access to their land, but still prohibit public access to the public land.
There's probably a mechanism for the county to establish a road.
There probably isn't real demand or funding to build a road. In Michigan, a lot of the roads used for land access are maintained when a timber harvest needs the road and then very little otherwise.
Footpaths wouldn’t help you with corner crossing in the US.
UK footpaths only work because the footpaths themselves long predate the legal system that enforces private property rights in the UK. There are no established footpaths in the US that predate US property rights, mainly because European colonists simply ignored the existence of indigenous peoples land claims. But the US legal system generally considers the issue of indigenous land rights a resolved issue (even if the indigenous peoples would beg to differ). So there’s no dispute you could use to create the universal concept of public footpaths on private property in the US.
Trespass to land involves the "unjustifiable interference
with land which is in the immediate and exclusive
possession of another"; it is both a tort and, in
certain circumstances, a crime under the Criminal Justice
and Public Order Act 1994. It is not necessary to prove
that harm was suffered to bring a claim, and is instead
actionable per se. While most trespasses to land are
intentional, the courts have decided that it could
also be committed negligently. Accidental trespass
also incurs liability.
That doesn't sound quite right. It's not just any path, it's more that there are old specific protected paths. It's a weird mix of the land being owned but publicly usable, but if you were starting from a much newer country it'd be easier to just publicly own the path.
This phenomena has been somewhat frustrating to me trying to plan hiking routes around North Lake Tahoe and Truckee. It's somewhat vexing how deteriorated recreation in the wilderness is because of this land ownership pattern. Even with a corner easement, it's not always the sensible place to have a trail. The result is many public squares that cannot be used as intended.
The problem is less prevalent farther to the south.
What this doesn't mention is that when this land was set out the government decided that x% would be for public uses and-- not having any better criteria in mind-- whomever got tasked with doing the layout just checkerboarded the parcels. This creates a significant mess, especially when you want to own a large piece of land and not have it contain random public chunks-- which you'll either need to be an ass at restricting people's access to or have your own privacy invaded by people traveling to and using them (as well as potential legal liability).
My understanding is that some land owners have had some degree of success purchasing additional pieces of land and trading them with the BLM to make their own property more contiguous.
In any case, I see posters here assuming that the land owners like this situation... but I know for a fact that many don't and would prefer their property not be discontinuous.
You don't generally locate in these regions if your concept of privacy allows for strangers 1000 feet away.
For this kind of privacy you go to Wyoming or Montana for--- think more along the lines of:
"No stranger without an expectation of getting shot at can see me at my home." The property you use is surrounded by a large buffer zone that no one should ever be in and the nearest part of that buffer zone is so far from any of your structures that they can hardly be seen from it.
This isn't to say that the corner cross itself is the problem. The people complaining about the corner crossings presumably don't want people entering the islanded public land that takes them deep into their property. Because then you've gotta worry if someone lurking around in that land is just using it peacefully, or if they're gonna cause you trouble. (which can also be accidental, like starting a wildfire or an errant gun shot from hunting hitting something you care about).
Another way to look at is like this: The price of a bay area home (say $2m) can buy you 2000 acres in Montana. At those sorts of prices it's completely reasonable to purchase a bunch of surplus property for no other purpose than preserving your isolation, access to nature, and piece of mind. Why be a NIMBY when you can just own all the property where third-party activity might adversely impact you? If you've gone to that trouble, then it's understandable that you might be be irritated by people invading that privacy-- particularly when they have to technically trespass to do so.
There should be right-of-way regardless of where you cross if the only way to access public land is to cross privately-owned land, specifically as one of many factors to disincentivize this stuff. The landowner should have zero recourse to stop people if they're blocking off public land.
Seems like a pretty narrow law could fix it. Easement of 3 feet at corners of very rural land where there is public land on either side. Surely such a "taking" of 0.000001% of private holdings could be tolerated - incredibly tiny compared to large swaths of easement on most properties across the country.
From this article, "This rancher, who wants to remain anonymous, sees trucks driving around in his pastures, sometimes well after dusk. Every rifle season, a fleet of trucks is parked on his private driveway. He’s witnessed people shooting deer on his property from the adjacent public land, and he’s caught people shooting deer well within his property. He’s heard shots ring out from the same direction as where his kids are out fixing fences, causing panic. There have been times he’s tried to approach trespassers and they’ve fled the scene, leaving dead or wounded deer behind. Law enforcement in his area is stretched too thin to respond to all the calls."
In my experience, around where I live, people don't generally have an issue with people walking on unimproved paths in the woods. It's people ripping up those paths with all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes or hunting near farm animals and people on private property.
In some European countries you must let people pass. So even if you are landlocked it doesn't really matter. Ofcourse there is much more people so this issue would be here much bigger.
If there's a public right of way across my land, I don't see why I would have to pay to maintain it. Doesn't apply in coastal California of course but I'm certainly not going to plow public access in the winter to a location that I don't otherwise need access to.
I suppose it makes sense as to how we ended up here, but how was physically traveling to these plots of land originally handled?
With this system and the laws around trespassing, how could any of these parcels of land been legally accessed? They would have had to cross a number of plots to arrive on a plot designated to the property owners.
Are you saying that there were, ant the time of creation, easements to the tens of thousands of square plots of land across the western USA? If so, what happened to them?
If this vast area of land was laid out as a grid of land and there are millions of acres of public plots inaccessible, wouldn’t it follow that there is a similar issue with private plots?
I’m sure a lot of this has been solved overtime with easements for roads, but when it was originally laid out I’d think that the vast majority of plots were not legally accessible as you’d have to cross over someone else’s plot to get there.
It seems to me no matter what the law says, private land owners could enforce their corners by simply building enough fencing at corners such that for a person to cross into public land they would have to undoubtedly trespass on an owners land to get around these fences.
In my not-a-lawyer understanding, easements can only ever preserve an existing path, but cannot create a new path. That is, a public easement would only exist if a path already exists, and that path remains in continuous use. If public land exists and is not accessible, the current legal system would not allow for the creation of an easement.
I think that this is a very real factor, at least in some cases. The adjacent land-owners get to use that public land all the time, and they don't have all the bother of other folks using it along side them; in fact, I suppose, if they wanted to, they could try to charge for access to it (via a toll road). But in this way, it really isn't that different than similar issues around beach access.
I'm sure the landowners have other concerns, some of them more legitimate than others.
Also, how did the checkerboard pattern happen to begin with? They don't want neighbors but they also don't want to buy the neighboring land, so having it landlocked in limbo is cheaper for them.
What's oddly unsaid here is WHY private landowners would care if you pass over their land for a half second without stepping on it. And the obvious answer is that they are treating public lands as their own private game reserve by blocking access.
The more interesting question is why the sheriff is colluding with them to enforce this, since the men were not apparently caught in the act of stepping over the corner. Rather the sheriff is using their state powers to provide security for a wealthy private citizen's misuse of public lands, and using the corner locking as a loophole to treat citizens on public lands as presumed trespassers. That seems like a more interesting story.
`the sheriff is using their state powers to provide security for a wealthy private citizen` That's the reason though, the police exist to protect the property rights of the wealthy.
Security forces always cater to the people who pay them. This is why the police are funded with taxpayer money, rather than donations or direct payments.
It's also why every citizen should be paying at least some tax, not just the wealthy.
It's ambiguous as there's no law on the books which specifically states that stepping over a property corner from public land to public land is illegal. And no state has passed a law on corner crossing one way or the other. Which is the point the article is making. You may be tired of the cynicism but some of us are tired of willful ignorance.
But trespassing laws do exist, as do airspace laws. I agree it’s an over-application of the law, but it’s not a law that doesn’t exist.
Like if I broke into Walmart and road a purple bike around while shooting stuff with a flamethrower, I don’t get to say “but no purple-bike-intrusion-arson-law exists”
If you read the actual article, you'll see that the courts have specifically refrained from creating legal precedent in cases of corner crossing. I would imagine that regardless of the outcome, the court will refrain from setting any sort of useful precedent.
That's not the discussion here. Just because something is a law does not mean it is aligned with the ethics we have chosen as a society. There are thousands of laws written by wealthy people to protect their wealth. This is one of them. Look at the bigger picture.
Do you agree with chopping up land like this so that it is inaccessible to the public? That's the discussion we are having.
And you can be tired of it, and call it cynical, but unfortunately it is actually history. Police were literally created to protect the interests of the wealthy slave owners.
The USA has a very dark history that has informed today's society, and I'm delighted we are finally beginning to address this despite the pushback from conservatives who want to keep the status-quo and hide history by controlling textbooks and eliminating or re-writing history education.
Now back to the topic. This lawsuit is very important, and I hope it leads to positive change.
> This lawsuit is very important, and I hope it leads to positive change.
I'm not sure it's very important, how many does it affect? I still do hope for a positive outcome that gives people access to these public lands though.
There are many reasons that private landowners want corner-crossing to remain off-limits, but we’ll cover just two common concerns here.”
The first concern is that it would be a violation of the fifth amendment’s “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
The second is that it’s hard enough to prevent people from trespassing on one’s land, and allowing them to cross these corners would make that worse.
(I’m not claiming these are strong arguments, just that the article does mention them)
This is a nuanced area of law but in many cases an easement for public access is not a “taking” or other violation under the fifth amendment. The property owner is not losing access, they don’t have a right to exclusively use the public land they are surrounding so others using it isn’t a loss.
> What's oddly unsaid here is WHY private landowners would care
The linked article has a section titled "Landowner Views on Corner-Crossing" that shows the landowner's point of view. To summarize the 2 points:
- It's the principle and landowners don't want their property rights eroded further.
- Corner crossers are often misbehaving bad actors. If no one's watching these people are likely to not just corner cross but actually violate private land. There's lots of quotes from a landowner about hunters shooting deer on private property.
(This is my summary of the points from the article, not my opinion)
In a nation where people are sued all the time for innocent things, I'm not surprised. For instance, if you have a Koi Pond too deep, it may qualify as a public nuisance, or a pool. And if someone comes on your property without your permissions, falls in and dies, you can be sued.
I don't hunt. But if I owned one of these properties, I would probably be equally annoyed by it. A bunch of people, with guns? One trips and falls into your property, accidentally shooting someone? Yup, you get sued, and potentially lose your property.
Seems like the reasonable thing to do to protect yourself from liability would be to give up a tiny strip of your land that provides public access to the publicly owned land. That way people who want to go to the publicly owned land go on that path and don't come on to your property and give you all that liability. It'd be a teeny fraction of land, but you could say with a straight face, "Hey, you wanted access to the public land? Use the nice convenient wide open access point, as the clearly posted signs indicate."
Intentionally buying up land that perfectly surrounds public land on all sides really betrays what's actually going on here.
The solution is even simpler: right to roam. Give all people the right to traverse wild, undeveloped private property at their own risk, with no liability for the owner (assuming good faith on the owner’s part).
Throw in some reasonable guardrails regarding proximity to residences, intent, etc., and call it a day.
>For all other types of easements, however, including property usage rights granted to a neighbor or private party, maintenance remains the property owner’s legal responsibility. If the easement does not involve a public utility company, therefore, the landowner will be liable. Otherwise, the utility company will be liable. However, if the granted party damages the property, he or she is legally obligated to restore it to its previous condition.
That's where "No Trespassing" signs come into play. IANAL but from what I understand you can't normally get sued if a trespasser does something stupid on your property. Obviously, thinks like tiger pits or other things designed to cause injury can still make you liable though.
Was hoping the defendant asked his accuser if they saw them cross the corner. If not, ask if it's possible they were dropped in by helicopter. Is they not reasonable doubt?
Another article I read on this had a (IMHO) clever hack to the problem; the interlopers brought a ladder and oriented it so that they could climb from one corner to the other without the possibility of touching private land.
But that doesn't work either as apparently land owners also own the air above their land. Sadly, no sarcasm tag here.
> But that doesn't work either as apparently land owners also own the air above their land. Sadly, no sarcasm tag here.
Not sure why that’s surprising. If that wasn’t true, then there would be nothing preventing someone from extending their home over someone’s else property by simply ensuring the extension never touched the ground.
Land ownership kinda has to include air rights above it, last I checked, humans aren’t capable of existing in a purely 2D space.
Corner-crossing is obviously an odd place where geometry and reality collide to produce some very odd results. But just because this specific edge-case make air right look silly, doesn’t mean that air right are a bad idea. In the vast majority of situations air right accurately reflect people’s common understanding of property rights.
>If that wasn’t true, then there would be nothing preventing someone from extending their home over someone’s else property by simply ensuring the extension never touched the ground.
Seems like they could just say "nothing touching the ground can impede on my property." But I concede the point to you.
My first thought (and why I was mentioning sarcasm) was because there's a ton of air traffic above private property all the time. But then I read into it a bit after reading your response and it looks like the legal definition is "air rights extend to the airspace above the surface that could reasonably be used in connection with the land."
OK, so the 747 above my house is likely fine. But why about the tiny prop plane flying over head to take pictures of my property? Or the obvious drones? It looks like they generally say anything above 500ft - 1000ft is not owned, depending on congestion. So drones are out but that annoying guy in the plane taking pictures to try to sell them to me is still allowed.
The navigable airspace of the US is under the jurisdiction of the FAA. That’s generally all of 500’ above ground and up, plus those amounts that are lower as required for takeoff and landing.
This article mentioned this. However, a helicopter is possible of staying over any airspace above the property that might be considered private property.
> The Continental U.S. (i.e. lower 48) has about 1.9 Billion acres and the vast majority is undeveloped as only 69.4 million acres, or about 3.6% is urban.
It probably is a good thing that 6M acres are land-locked...
That is what I was thinking, the title was pretty clear and it is a good thing (if anything, probably a larger portion of the land should stay pristine).
