Trespass

Washington Supreme Court adopts relative hardship doctrine and refuses to order a house removed when it was unwittingly built on land owned by another

/ Easements, Servitudes, Statute of Frauds, Trespass

Defendants unknowingly built their house on land that belonged to the plaintiff who also did not know that the land belonged to him. The mistake was discovered after the house was built and plaintiff sued to eject the trespassers from his land. The Washington Supreme Court denied injunctive relief, adopting the relative hardship doctrine. The court granted plaintiff damages for the value of the land encroached on by his neighbor’s structure but denied plaintiff an injunction ordering the structure removed. Proctor v. Huntington, 238 P.3d 1117 (Wash. 2010).

Owner may not cut down a tree straddling boundary line without neighbor’s consent

/ Nuisance, Trespass

In Young v. Ledford, 37 So. 3d 832 (Ala. Ct. Civ. App. 2009), an Alabama court held that an owner could not remove the half of a tree that sat on his property without killing it and that the owner could not destroy the entire tree without the neighbor’s consent. The landowner claimed that the tree was dangerous and might fall on the owner’s house and the court noted that it is possible an exception might be granted in such cases of boundary trees when they constitute a nuisance.

Native Alaskan family awarded $4.9 million in damages for trespass

/ Trespass, Tribal Property

A federal judge awarded the Oenga family of Barrow, Alaska $4.9 million dollars in damages against the United States because the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) authorized BP oil company to cross the Oenga’s property to obtain access to 3 of BP’s oil fields when the family had only granted permission for access to one of those fields. Judge Awards Alaskan family $5M (U.S. News, Feb. 9, 2001) While the case is, in some sense, an ordinary trespass case, it is complicated by the fact that the BIA has legally-enforceable fiduciary obligations to protect the property rights of Native Alaskans. The Oengas are Inupiats (Eskimos).

Third Circuit allows trespass suit against Google

/ Trespass

The Third Circuit allowed Pittsburgh couple Aaron and Christine Boring to proceed with their trespass suit against Google brought after a Google employee entered their land despite a “No Trespassing” sign to take pictures of their house and pool for use on Google Maps street view. Boring v. Google Inc., 2010 WL 318281 (3d Cir. 2010). The trial court had thrown out the trespass claim because the Borings had not alleged any damage from the trespass but the Third Circuit held that Pennsylvania law (like the law elsewhere) does not require proof of damage to find a trespass. Any unauthorized entry onto another’s land constitutes a trespass unless privileged. See article. On remand, if the trespass is proved factually, the land owners would be entitled at least to nominal damages, perhaps of $1. This would obviously not deter any business from trespassing unless it would be hurt by adverse publicity from such trespasses. The …

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Trespass and the right to roam

/ Trespass

We generally take for granted that owners have the power to exclude non-owners from their land. But at one time in the United States,unenclosed and undeveloped land was open to the public for the purpose of hunting, gathering kindling and berries, and walking. Eric Freyfogle, The Lost Right to Roam, in On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership of Land 29 (2007). Today, about half the states still allow hunting on private land unless the owner has posted “no trespassing” signs. Mark R.Sigmon, Hunting and Posting on Private Land in America, 54 Duke L.J. 549(2004). Moreover, owners who wanted to protect their fields from wandering cattle originally had to fence them out; they had no right to complain that a trespass had occurred when cattle wandered onto their property. Nor could railroads insist that cattle owners prevent them from intruding on train tracks. See, e.g., Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad Co. v. Peacock, 25 Ala.229 (1854); Macon & …

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