Hacker News Reader

Comment by drc500free | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

`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.

I'm tired of this cynical view. Did they break the law as it is written, yes or no?

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.

Ah! Ambiguous? So the courts should decide?

> Their trial, set for mid-April, will decide if they trespassed when they passed through that private airspace.

What's the problem here?

The problem is the courts haven't decided thus the sheriff is enforcing a law that doesn't exist, as per the complaint up the thread.

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.

https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/origins-m...

https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2021/12/08/the-history-of-...

The policing crisis we are facing today has a large component that is rooted in police serving the wealthy at the expense of the lower classes.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-...

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.

The police exist to protect the property rights of everyone!

In theory, but maybe not in practice.

FTA:

“Landowner Views on Corner-Crossing

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)

They're pseudo-arguments. Disingenuous platitudes that elide the motivation strong enough for the landowners to create lobbying groups.

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.

It's normal to compensate people for easements.

> 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.

Have you ever tried to subdivide a property? You make it sound like this is easy, but this is not easy at all.

Legally clarifying public right of way access would obviate the need for formal subdivision.

Again. If I was a landowner, I would never take that risk. For instance:

https://www.rkmlaw.net/who-is-liable-for-accident-on-easemen...

>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.

Okay.

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.

I really like this, and would support it. However, it's not the world the US lives in today.

We have this in Norway, it’s called allemannsretten “every man’s right”

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.

>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

Somewhere, the people that established this are sitting comfortable while everyone else is suffering under the weight of their absurd decisions.

Billions have been spent because of this stupid rule/mindset.

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.

I guess they consider hunters a nuisance in itself, that's the real problem for them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com