Pennyaline wrote:
zxcvbob wrote:
In this case, the "neighbor" is Olmsted County, MN. The person living
in the house (rented from the county) is not a problem. The county
itself is sending people out to spray.

The county is most likely immune from any civil lawsuits, small claims
or otherwise. I have to go after the applicator, or find a criminal
statute violated by the county.

I'll bet they're not immune. It used to be a given, but governments big
and small have been made to answer for their presumptive behaviors
lately. If they contracted with Chemlawn, they are responsible for what
Chemlawn does. F'rinstance, Comcast has a right of way through the back
of my property. Two years ago, they had to do excavations on that right
of way to do line upgrading. Comcast hired an outside company to do the
excavation and lay the line. When the work was done, everybody pulled up
and left and the back of my property was a freakin' mess! They were just
gone without a word, and when the yard remained unchanged days later it
seemed evident that they had no intention of clearing up. There were
tire tracks all over my yard from their digging equipment, my back fence
was pushed over, and huge clods of dirt and sod were everywhere. They
hadn't backfilled properly and the trench line was a heaving lumpy mess.
When I called Comcast about it a few days later, they told me it wasn't
their problem since the "other company" did the work. I reminded them
that the "other company" was acting in Comcast's interest and under
Comcast's direction and as a result it was as if Comcast had done the
work itself and was responsible for cleaning it up. But to be on the
safe side, I backed it up with a letter from an attorney. The "other
company" was out there the next day leveling off the backfill, cleaning
up the mess, and lining the fence back up nice and straight.



BTW, it got interesting a couple of years ago when the house was
vacant one winter, and I called the sheriff and told him if I was
supposed to keep *my* sidewalk cleared, he needed to come out and
shovel *his*. (There was a huge snowstorm and the sidewalk went
unshoveled for a couple of days, in violation of a local ordinance.)
They sent someone out a couple of hours later.

As they should.


Here's one for you:

we own some land outside of a town near here. 20+ acres of pasture
land, currently occupied by 9 horses and 5 cows. NC DOT recently
decided that they want to take our pasture and run a *new* ditch thru
it. The overflow from an area pond runs thru the pasture in a little
stream and now they want to re-route it. We have been informed by local
government, that they are taking a little over 5 acres for this project,
right down the middle of the pasture, digging a trench, and lining it
with landscaping rocks. Do you know what effect that the rocks will
have on the horses feet?!? The way they want to fix it will almost
eliminate any water flow thru the pasture, thus having a bad effect on
the cows. For those who aren't ranchers on the group, the water is vital
to the cows in other ways than for drinking. Cows don't sweat, so they
stand in the water to cool themselves. The township and the county have
already approved this project. So how can we fight this one? Oh, and
during this process, we are *required* to remove all animals from the
pasture, so as the machinery won't scare them and make them *wild*. They
*assure* us that we will be paid for the acreage they take, as soon as
the project is complete. Like we had it for sale before hand or
something............Everything I've tried to do to prevent this, has
turned into dead-ends. Frustrating! UGH!