Interesting article. Not being a New Yorker I am not familiar with their laws...
http://prfamerica.org/2013/CourtIgnoresOldBoundary-Wall.html
I guess money can buy what you want if somebody takes that money and is willing to ignore common sense and attempt to change the laws of the land.
> I guess money can buy what you want if somebody takes that money and is willing to ignore common sense and attempt to change the laws of the land.
:good:
I wonder if this is the only case...
How do the surveyors respond?
DDSM
One does wonder about the objectivity of the article given the other material on the organizations website railing against "world socialist government orchestrated through the United Nations using UN Agenda 21 to further the plans of the internationalist environmental agenda" :'(
I don't have time to research and fully comment on this but there were a lot of good reasons for the change in the laws...if I remember there was a lot of fraud happening and the courts where completely clogged with cases.
Also a wall is not always a boundary wall...lets keep that straight. There are lots of walls built for farms, fields, etc in these woods. Maybe a wall was the edge of an old lane that was abandoned 15 years ago and the line was up the center of that old lane. If the original deeds said to a blazed line and made no mention of the wall...and the distances put the line 10 feet back from the wall...where is the line if you can't find the blazes?
I'll look into this when I have some free time but I would suspect that there is a lot more to this case than is being presented here. Any article that comes off like this has to be questioned.
Tom
[sarcasm]"....meets and bounds...."[/sarcasm]
Really????
I don't think that it's such a bad thing.....
SS
It would be time consuming to address all the inaccuracies of that article. Suffice to mention a few things.
First, The BAR association was against the legislation. Of course. Under a squatters rights AP law there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of people trying it out and hiring attorneys to fight for land without buying it. Pays more than a mere closing on a real estate transaction.
Second, in regard to above, most thought the law in NY was already what the new legislation made it. We think this one decision by the high court (walling) was a very poor decision. I was taught in surveying school, then taught others in the surveying program, then I was taught again in law school, that NY AP law required a good faith claim of right. I personally read cases that seemed to say that. However, the high court in this one decision turned it all around; hence the need for the legislation. And hence the BAR association trying to stop the legislation; they had been handed a goose that could lay golden eggs.
Third, stone walls may well be the best evidence of the deed line, regardless of the other metes and bounds of the description. They could also indicate a line by practical application and acquiesence under NY law. They still could be evidence in a successful AP claim. But, someone needs to know the law, evaluate the evidence properly and make the correct argument. I suspect that did not happen in the case the article rails against; I suspect that every time someone tells me the line has changed from what it has been since the time of creation of the parcels.
So no, in NY you can't just decide you like the looks of your neighbors land, wall it in and take it. I know; the injustice of it all:-(
OH, and BTW, if the wall in the article was actually in place for 70 years, the AP law as put forth in the "walling" case would have been applied anyway and not the newer legislative correction of the "walling" case. With AP, title passes when the elements are met. So, the newer legislation can't take away and return a title that passed under the "walling" rule. That would be unconstitutional.
:good:
