So - When does private property belong to the owner
and when is it simply a challenge?
Within the first few weeks of us moving into our new home we found ourselves in our parking area locking up the car to go up to the house. As we finished a jeep pulled up beside the entrance to the parking lot and a couple guys looked over and asked when we were opening.
Our poor dilapidated tram landing after the big thanksgiving flood
(after we replaced the stairs)
I wish I had taken a couple extra minutes back then to ask what they thought we were opening as to this day I haven’t a clue what kind of business our cable car landing looks like. This incident was our introduction into the world of rural land ownership, where if you don’t have the ability to look out of your window and see every last centimeter of your property then anyone wandering by feels that it’s open to the public.
The sign we posted that still gets ignored
Since then we’ve put ‘no trespassing’ signs on the parking lot gate and on the stairs to the tram landing and my neighbors are kind enough to continue to chase people of the top of our tram landing when they see them hanging over the handrails. Once they had to chase down a man who was wandering down the road-side while his 2-year-old daughter climbed half-way up the tram steps with no supervision.
Doug’s friend zipping on the old cable that
begins near the tram landing on the house-side and ends
at the mini-island in the middle of the river
Early this spring my neighbor-lady tossed a couple guys off the tram landing who thought our cable looked like a zip line. They had almost finished hooking themselves on when she wandered up and asked, "You do know this is private property, right?". It would be interesting to know how long it would have taken them to get back after they ‘zipped’ to the lowest point in the center of the cable and found themselves hanging 7m (~20ft) above the ground with no option but to pull themselves 150m (~500ft) back up to the landing. Our cable has enough slack in it that it would have been a long hard pull!
I’m not saying we’re unique in having this problem with trespassers. The neighbor also chased a group of kids off of the porch of one of the neighboring weekend cabins. The kids had started a major bonfire in the front yard and were having a keg party and weenie roast. I’ve never heard that any of the locals go into the city and camp out in someone’s drive for a tailgating party while the owners are away. What’s with the total lack of manners in observing someone’s home in my neighborhood?
Note: The US Laws vary somewhat between states but are generally follows:
• A landowner who is surprised by or doesn’t know he has trespassers can't act with reckless disregard for others (in a way that can be foreseen to possibly cause injury to others) nor harm the trespasser without cause but he can act in self-defense.• If a landowner knows that there is a trespasser on his land and does nothing about it he may be responsible for the trespasser’s accidents if the landowner hasn’t generally worked to prevent foreseeable accidents or injuries on his property (eg. Obstacles on or damage to parts of the property that can possibly cause falls).
• The trespasser is responsible for trespassing without permission. This may negate any claims he might make for accidents that happen when he is trespassing on the property.
The variation in how the claim is judged comes from how much weight is given to each point. A couple states say that if the trespasser is even 1% at fault for his own accident he gets nothing, in other states more of the burden is on the landowner.
(ref. https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=35316)