Not quite the way I see it. To a point I agree the yard is still usable. My conclusion is different.
Judge: For ignoring the law, the contractor must pay damages of $xxx.xx for loss of land use and court costs and attorney's fees. Perhaps in the future you will pay more attention and respect the laws and neighbor's property.
If it was me, I'm not sure what I'd do. Probably not sue though. I may even settle out of court for a good bottle of bourbon. If it was six inches, a foot, yes, it would not be so simple.
But judges do tend to follow the law. Otherwise we would have chaos. And that gets back to my original point. Judges don't sit there and listen to all sides, then decide what they think is fair. That is a common misconception. They follow the law. Hence, I gave you the example of a contract, where later one party thinks that the "fair" price of the contract should have been $1000, yet the contract says $2000. A judge isn't going to say, "well, you're right, that truck should have only cost you $1000. Or it isn't "fair" that 2 weeks later it needed a new transmission. The judge is going to look at the law. You entered into a contract for $2000, the truck was sold as-is. Pay the $2000. That was my point, but then you tried to say this isn't a contracts case. Doesn't matter, the points regarding the law vs fairness are valid.
Sure, and it doesn't say you can't trespass, steal, or murder either, just that you "may not", right?
Obviously you CAN build something on another man's
Sure, there is never a 100% assurance as to what will happen. But in your world, you think that it's somehow OK for a neighbor's contractors, architect, etc to DELIBERATELY build a fence on someone else's property even after being told *not* to do it. There was no disagreement, no legitimate dispute, no uncertainty where the line was. You think courts reward that kind of behavior, by then telling the poor sap to just eat it. I think there is an overwhelming likelihood that the court will tell them to move the fence. Courts don't tend to reward bad behavior for obvious reasons. The next shyster will pull the same thing.
Adverse possession is not specific to building on a property. And again, that whole process takes 20 years and requires that the party PAY THE TAXES on the property. It's a million light years from what is going on here.
You must like letting people walk all over you. I for one, don't. It's not just the 1.5", it's the principle of not letting some skunk take advantage of you. Who is that neighbor to decide what part of my property is or is not important? And what's the big deal with him and/or his contractor eating it and paying to move 40 ft of fence? Good grief...
Yawn.... This is like the a defense counsel for a rape case blaming the victim for walking in the wrong neighborhood at night.
And the plaintiff could just say they were not home when it was being done. And then you conveniently assume that plaintiff is going to be so dumb to just agree it's about his "hurt feelings"? Of course he's going to say, my back yard is tiny, I want that 1.5" instead of my neighbor stealing it from me. I paid for it. It's mine. I pay real estate taxes on it, and over the years it's amounted to $500. Pretty weak strawman.
Lame strawman!
It may even raise the value since there is now a fence
Strawman!
One fellow in this thread added one sentence to a post with 912 lines; yikes!
Jon
To put things in perspective. The back side neighbor's property is 21' wide. It is a rare one that is more than the standard 20'. On my block most don't even have 20'. There are a bunch of 18' and inches, some 18', four that are 16.25' and one that is 12.5' wide.
My back yard is 20' x 29' 5-3/4".
Land here is worth about $800/sq ft. Maybe more. There are no empty plots. It makes it hard to apportion between land and house value.
Don.
What's more, unless your property are within 100' of a corner, you are required to have a 30' rear yard. While your 29' 5-3/4" is probably grandfathered in, it is an illegal code violation to make it any less than that.
It was a very important sentence that needed the other 912 lines to give it context. ;-)
And it needed to be quadruple spaced because text needs breathing room.
No smiley included, figure it out.
I'm sure many of them do. I hope the majority. But I've been in court more than once and I've seen the other more than once.
On one occasion, the judge said (with the court recorder still transcribing!) that the covenants were violated but that he the paperwork required for ruling that way was inconvenient.
the problem lies with trader4. using google groups, replies are double spaced and make ya dizzy scrolling to find the reply
There are about five or six google groupers contributing to the problem, of which he is but one, and he is not the one with the whopper I mentioned above.
I specifically did not single out any members of that subset, because those who give a rat's ass will get the message and trim their posts, and any that remain will have proven themselves as beyond repair. YMMV.
Jon
Yeah I know, didn't mean to single him out. Let me rephrase it to google groupers, then Especially when replying to another googler
I don't understand why so many tolerate google with the recent events. There are many free news servers to use, but folks don't use 'em. I'm not sure they can do much about the way google formats their post, but then I don't know much about what options if any they give you. I much prefer a NNTP server over web based anyday
What law did the contractor ignore? Please be specific.
the contractor must pay damages of
So you suborn perjury?
I saw nothing that indicated teh back yard was "tiny" or that the lost of the 1.5" was going to create the slightest problem.
RE Taxes are not based on how many square inches of lot you have.
It's just the facts.
Just the facts.
I agree.
Well it does matter. There is a significant difference between "contract law" and "a dispute". But even with a contract there is no assurance the judge is going to stick blindly to the exact requirements.. he may very well look at intent. What was the intent of the contract... and that can cut both ways. But as I said, this is not a contract law case.
Also, which I think some people fail to understand, this is NOT a criminal case where the law is often fairly specific about "remedies" but it is a civil case. As such the judge WILL listen to both sides and almost assuredly will be looking for a FAIR resolution. And in some cases a FAIR resolution might even mean that a fence 0.5" "too far" might have to be moved, if, for example, it prevented cars from coming thru the entrance to a parking garage and therefore ruined the garage's business. It might also mean that a fence 16 feet "too far" and 3 miles long might get to stay because it's out in the middle of nowhere dividing one guys 10,000 acres from the other guys 10,000 acres.
I don't think you'll find the laws written in terms of "You can't/may not murder people/or other criminal acts". I think you'll find them writing more along the lines of this from AZ statues...
13-1105. First degree murder; classification A. A person commits first degree murder if:I've never said that. Why do you assume it was deliberate? We know he started in the wrong place. Was told it was wrong. Then he started over. Apparently it was still in the wrong place but we have no insight at this time as to whether that was deliberate or a mistake.
If the contractor testified in court "Yeah Your Honor, I knew it was being built in the wrong place but I really didn't care." the outcome might be different then if he said "I thought I had moved it back to the right line, I'm as shocked as anyone that it was STILL encroaching, I don't know how this happened but it was an honest mistake and the 1.5" error isn't hurting the guys property."
In AZ it doesn't require any payment of taxes and doesn't take 20 years but in other states it could well be different. In any case, the point is the same even if you wish to ignore it.
Are you a new Yorker? You sound like one. Lets fight over the trivial, ...... So if it's the "principle" will you fight over this if the error is a quarter inch?
I think it's like anything, really; once a person becomes accustomed to something it becomes ingrained, and more difficult to change. Then there are also some people who might use, say, a work computer, or someone else's computer, so for them having a consistent HTML interface makes sense.
My guess is that those users either don't know what they are doing, because google hides all of the quoted content behind a "Show quoted text" link, or they just don't care. Perhaps we should remind them about etiquette more often, as those who came before us were more wont to do.
Unfortunately, google doesn't care about usenet, and from their behavior since taking over deja, most likely would prefer that it went away entirely. Otherwise they might put up a prompt stating, "Your message is quoting a lot of lines, are you sure about that?", among numerous other things.
Jon
Did you not see that his back yard is (was) 29' 5-3/4" deep while NYC zoning requires a 30' rear yard. It is patently illegal and subject to DOB violation to make your property less complying in terms of zoning
They sure are in NYC.
It's not a dispute. It's one party building a fence on another man's property, without permission, despite being told *not* to do so. That's like saying trespassing is a "dispute". Or building a driveway over another guys land is a dispute. It's a violation of law. There was no dispute over where the property line was. Both parties had the same survey showing the exact same thing.
Say it some more if it makes you feel good. I've told you
3 times now, that I never said it was a contracts case. I only gave you that contract case example to show that courts don't go to "fairness" unless it's necessary. They first are there to enforce and follow the law. So, just like you can't violate a contract and expect it to be settled by a judge on "fairness" instead of law, neither can you expect to flagerantly build a fence on another mans property and expect a judge to settle it based on some perception of fairness, as opposed to law.I don't see anyone here saying anything to remotely suggest that.
As such the judge WILL listen to both sides
Again with the fairness. Good grief. No. The judge will first apply the LAW.
And in
Did any of those get put into place despite the legal property owner having told them not to put the fence on their property? With the property boundary clearly marked, knows to both parties? Do you like to let people walk all over you, flip you the finger?
Yawn....
Because of the facts stated over and over by Don.
We know
Good grief. This isn't a freaking $1mil concrete house that was built on property the neighbor doesn't own. It's a freaking 20 ft fence. What the hell exactly is so hard about the neighbor doing the right thing and moving that fence? The total cost would be less than going to a lawyer for an opinion.
Point? What point? This is not about adverse possession.
Lets fight over the
No, I'm not a New Yorker. I'm just an American who stands up for my rights and won't let some neigbor skunk walk all over me.
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