"Warren" wrote in message
news:53EKc.91290$WX.44757@attbi_s51...
Doug Kanter wrote:
***IMMEDIATELY*** call your town hall when they open on Monday morning
and
find out what your judge needs (paperwork, photographs, etc) in order
to
charge the spray service with civil trespass. You can include the
neighbor,
too, if they become beligerent about the situation. I went through
this
successfully about 4 years ago here in Rochester NY.

If anyone wants to start a debate about whether this qualifies as
trespass,
please save your energy. This is not a guess or a theory on my part.
Our
local judge was prepared to issue an injunction to keep my neighbor
from
allowing Chem Lawn to spray along our property border. He told me to
inform
my neighbor and the spray company that the police would be ordered to
arrest
them on the spot if the stupidity continued. This did the trick
nicely.

Oh, I can't pass this up.

Trespass is defined by state statute. What's true in New York may not be
true elsewhere.

Yes. The laws elsewhere may be different. Naturally, this doesn't mean it's
not worth investigating while there's still a smoking gun, so to speak.


A few years ago there was some debate about some guy in New York being
arrested at a shopping center for something or another. In the middle of
that debate I decided to go to the horse's mouth, and read the New York
statutes. They were quite different than other states. As I recall there
were even degrees of trespass, some being civil, and others being
criminal.

As for going down to the "town hall" to get a judge, that's a bit of a
unique thing by area as well. When I lived in Wisconsin, nearly every
incorporated municipality had a court. Out here in Oregon, few do. In
both places, you don't just go down and get to see a judge.


Perhaps, but at most courthouses, there'll be a clerk who knows what he/she
is talking about, and that person can provide the guidance necessary to get
things on track quickly. I was lucky. The judge happened to be my son's
baseball coach, so I didn't need a middleman for advice. He just said "do x,
y and z and you're in business". He said the civil trespass laws were often
interpreted to include all sorts of "lively objects" entering another
person's property, like chemicals, stray baseballs, and especially dogs.


You may also find that in many places cases like this (involving little
monetary damage, and not likely to be an immediate danger to health or
safety) your case will be diverted from the court system to mediation.

There *is* an immediate danger to health. A food crop has been contaminated
with a chemical which cannot be demonstrated as safe.


If running down to town hall, and showing a judge some pictures that
morning works were you are, then that's a viable option. I'd have to say
you're in the minority.

A guess on your part, but it's a free country.


Also, since the OP has added the information that the house is owned by
the county, and rented, it probably wouldn't even be as simple as your
situation even if that unique option was available. In most places a
municipal judge doesn't have jurisdiction to order the county to do
anything.

The court system is seldom the answer to neighbor disputes. And it
certainly should never be the first thing anyone tries.

In my situation, the neighbor had been told several times that the spray
company was being careless. The neighbor's response: "If the stuff's not
safe, how come they're allowed to sell it?" In cases of stupidity, nothing
works except a bucket of ice cold water, in a legal sense. You're right to
say that the legal avenue should be a last resort. But, in order for a
neighbor to understand the dangers of certain chemicals, they must possess a
certain level of education and intellect. In my situation, this was not the
case.