People vs. Property has been in the news again here in the Great Lakes. In the town of Greenbush on Lake Huron a feud between neighbors over rights to beach access morphed into a lawsuit, which made its way eventually to the State Supreme Court.
One party’s property deed granted a 15 foot easement along the second party’s land for the purpose of walking to the lake front. When the second party purchased his land in 1997, the first party alleged that he began harassing her and her family, claiming that they were trespassing. The lawsuit sought to have the court rule not only on the easement, but to define the extent of the public’s right to the shoreline, as well.
Lots of dogs in this fight, of course. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce filed an amicus curiae brief supporting Property. A broad coalition of bankers, business people and property owners held fund raisers, set up web sites and organized quite a campaign to convince the court to define the public space on the shoreline as the wet part of the sand only. Of course, if the public can’t get to the wet sand without trespassing … Ah, ha! How cunningly simple!
Fortunately for the other 99.99 percent of us who don’t own Great Lakes lakefront property, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled 7-0 in favor of the public’s right to the shore line and 5-2 in defining the public access line to be the high water mark, not merely the wet part.
The Takings crowd was using the environment as an argument, beach grasses, bird sanctuary, anything they could get their hands on (as usual) to sew up their entitlement to a little slice of heaven without all the riff raff spoiling the view. True enough, there are idiots galore, and they pee anywhere they want like it’s 5000 years BC, they build fires and throw cigarette butts and beer cans all over tarnation. They’re rude and let their kids run wild. They don’t put their trash in trash cans. They get drunk and break bottles over each other’s heads.
But I don’t do any of the foregoing.
Save Our Shoreline.com and Preserve The Land (PTL) are available as domain names, if anyone is interested. The lawyers are boo-hooing about volley ball games and droves of fishermen setting up their equipment, but the ruling didn’t expand public rights at all. It merely reaffirmed them.
8 comments:
These battles are inevitable and will only escalate as time goes on and real estate becomes more scarce and valuable.
As the income divide grows deeper, the wealthy will simply take the matter in their own hands, protect their investment as they see, law or rights be damned.
It's sad. I've seen nearly all the fun places of my youth in California built over, fenced off or simply ruined. It's difficult for me to blame the owners because I seen the senseless destruction that "the public" can leave in their wake.
But that still doesn't make it right.
SOmetimes I am ashamed to be part of the public, because it seems that the mean has sunk quite low.
oh boy, the monkeys have been busy haven't they?
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