Sadly, in the United States there really truly is no such thing as “property ownership.” You can only own things that the government cannot take away from you on a whim… and “property taxes” mean that at best you are renting the land you thought you owned. Think I’m exaggerating? Fine. Buy a nice expensive plot of land with a nice expensive house on it, and then don’t pay the property taxes. See what happens.
And then there’s this nonsense:
Superior man arrested for trespassing on his own land
Jeremy Engelking will appear in Douglas County court this afternoon to face a trespassing charge. But here’s the kicker: The Superior man allegedly trespassed on his own property.
Engelking, 27, aimed to hunt deer Wednesday morning when he noticed a pipeline crew on his land. He hopped on his ATV and told workers they had no right to be on his property because he had received no compensation from Enbridge Energy Partners L.P. for an easement.
…
But just as he was turning to leave, Engelking said an officer from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene and approached with a Taser drawn.“He ordered me to ‘get down on the ground now!’ And he said that I was being arrested for trespassing,” Engelking said.
When Engelking protested, pointing out that he was on his own property, he said Sgt. Robert Smith told him: “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to jail. You can tell it to a judge tomorrow.”
This is just another in a long list of reasons why the concept of “eminent domain” needs to be strictly defined and controlled in the Constitution… so strictly as to be made virtually extinct.
9 Responses to “So you thought you owned property…”
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Government? Not any more. Now, we have “rulers” over which we have no control.
There’s more to this than what was in that article. The pipeline was put in in 1949 and the oil company is upgrading and expanding. When his parents bought the property the easement was already in place. So it’s not like they are tearing through this guy’s back yard without any history. This whole thing went through the courts with his parents years ago when they tried to vacate the existing easement. The last time they did this, the court found that the compensation was proper, so despite the fact that the parents never cashed the check the pipeline company is on firm legal footing for this upgrade.
The guy was riding on an ATV with a loaded deer rifle and threatening the workers. He also has a history of trying to cause trouble over the pipeline as do, obviously, his parents.
What’s going to happen is that Enbridge is going to lay their new pipes, restore his back lot and hand him his check for $15,000.
Teh article as written casts doubt on whether the existing agreement covers the new work.
> The guy was riding on an ATV with a loaded deer rifle and threatening the workers.
Again, that’s not quite what the article suggests. Unless these workers are the sort of drones who see a person deer hunting on his own property as being “threatening,” or who just generally freak out at the sight of an armed citizen.
UPDATE from another article: A rifle was strapped to the front of his ATV, but it was never removed from its case and Engelking said he never threatened anyone with it.
Ooh, scary, scary. A strapped-down rifle in a case.
> What’s going to happen is that Enbridge is going to lay their new pipes, restore his back lot and hand him his check for $15,000.
The article suggests he has already rejected the $15k.
If the government thought that what they were doing was the sort of thing that required them to compensate the landowner, but the landowner neither wants them to do it nor cashes their check… then they have no more right to go ahead and do their work than if I offered to buy your car, you refused, and I went and took it anyway and left a check on your front porch.
They do have that right if they have an existing utility easement. Once that’s in place the utility has the absolute right to maintain their equipment. Enbridge has literally sent an employee to this guy’s house to hand him the check for $15,000. The utility has made every attempt to compensate this guy for his trouble. The $15,000 he’s been offered is well above what the utility is required to pay. This guy’s argument that they can’t operate on his property because they haven’t compensated him is void because the only reason he hasn’t been compensated is that he refused to cash the check.
Or in your auto analogy, if I go to you to buy a car and we agree on terms once I hand you a check, you cannot reposess the car just because you didn’t cash the check.
Oh, and by the way. No government entities are involved here, Enbridge Energy is a private company. Eminent domain is not involved, this is an argument over an existing utility easement.
> Once that’s in place the utility has the absolute right to maintain their equipment.
And this guy has the absolute right to wander his own property, armed or otherwise. The issue here is that he was *invited* onto the work area:
“Workers told Engelking he was not standing in a safe place and asked him to come around to a staging area on the other side of the trench. He complied and continued his conversation in this designated area.”
So he got arrested for tresspassing after going where he was inveted *on* *his* *own* *property.*
>if I go to you to buy a car and we agree on terms once I hand you a check, you cannot reposess the car just because you didn’t cash the check.
If you come to me to buy the *door* of a car and I don’t cash the check, you don’t have the right to take the whole car. From the sounds of it, Enbridge wants more than is in the existing easement agreement.
“When the latest pipeline project came along, the Engelkings again refused to modify the original 1949 right-of-way agreement.”
>No government entities are involved here…
Eminent domain and property taxation are the larger issues.
Eminent domain and property taxation are the LARGER issues??
Ehm, sorry Scott but they are not even the ‘glimmer’ of a possible issue in this case. Mr. Engelking is LEGALLY wrong from start to finish in this case or have you not read even what YOU posted here??
1) Mr. Engelking’s PARENTS fought and LOST a legal battle about the PRE-EXSISTING right-of-way that was already in exsistance when they BOUGHT the property
2) The Court decided that while the Parents did NOT OWN the land included in the right-of-way, they WERE entitled to compensation from the pipeline company for the loss of that land. The COMPANY obeyed the legal order of the court and issued the Engelkings a check. (Which they continue to do to this day) NOTHING in the court order or the legal case is predicated on the Engelkings CASHING the check, they simply have LEGALLY never OWNED the land in question!
3) Engelking said he “Didn’t threaten” anyone, deputies and utility workers dispute this, hence he was arrested. He was “invited” to remove himself from an UNSAFE position into an ongoing construction and work site NOT LOCATED ON HIS PROPERTY. (Legally, see cited court case above) Which made the supervisor of the site legally and morally responsible for both allowing Mr. Engelking access to the work site but also for HAVING him removed should the SUPERVISOR choose that option! It was HIS work site, and NOT as we have already noted Mr. Engelkings “property” and if HE judged Mr. Engelking to have need to be removed from HIS work site by arrest, he is legally justified in making that decision.
4) Cashing the check makes NO legal difference in that the ENTIRE issue here is Mr. Engelking’s insistance that by NOT cashing said check he and his family are somehow LEGALLY able to ignore a court decision they don’t like rather than, say… Attempting to take the issue BACK to court?
This is NOT about “eminent-domain” as this was not invoked nor involved in the case, it’s NOT about “property-taxation” because if it WAS in the slightest it should be mentioned that the Engelking family has paid NO property or OTHER taxes on THE RIGHT-OF-WAY LAND since the original court case was decided because the COURT decided that they DIDN’T OWN the land in question! Period. The “check” they continue to refuse was ordered by the court as COMPENSATION for the land that they court found the pipeline company and not the Engelkings owned but that they felt the Engelkings were entitiled to being paid for.
Engbridge DOES want more than the original easement, they have offered to PAY more for more of the easement, the Engelkings not only don’t want them to have MORE they want them GONE! Unfortunatly for the Engelkings the COURTS decided the pre-exsisting easement was LEGAL and the Engelkings had no LEGAL right to force Engbridge to remove the pipeline.
Car analogy? You BOUGHT the car but the courts say you don’t OWN the door. Someone is TRYING to pay you for the doory but you’re not cashing the check does this mean they company can’t open the door panel and clean and replace some parts in THEIR door because you own the car? Not a chance, you don’t OWN the door, the court already decided that issue. Don’t like it? Sell the car, or go back to court and get the decision changed.
(While NOT cashing the check keeps the option of getting a new court decision it’s not something you can use to activly DEFY the court decision as Mr. Engelking seems to think. Any COMPATENT lawyer would tell him that and I’d suggest he get one.)
Eminent domain being overused? Oh HELL ya, I’m from Ogden and our “conservative” mayor LOVES to drop that hammer any chance he gets. But anyone who doesn’t understand that the United States Government basically “laid-claim” to the entire continent 200 years ago and in the end owns EVERY SQUARE INCH of ground hasn’t done their homework on “property-rights.” It’s the very same with the issue of ‘Property-taxes’, how many folks KNOW you actually can LEGALLY STOP paying taxes? YOU have to PAY for the legal work, YOU have to basically “prove” that you have not and never will partake in services PAID for by those taxes but it CAN be done.
I have yet to see anyone make a good case FOR doing so either other than someone PROVING it could be done. Yet people for some reason have this “idea” that because the United States is not “Europe” and therefore we somehow managed to miss out on not having government in the end ‘owning’ or at least “arbitrating-ownership” of property both real and assumed. This is only the “americanized” version of the “right-of-kings” where they King/Queen owned ALL the land and everyone else gets what they give them.
Here in the United States while ALL the land devolves eventually into being ‘owned’ by the Government there is in-place a structure which allows you to ‘buy’ land and live on it pretty much as you please as long as you obey certain regulations, observe certain rules, and pay certain monies for the privilage of having that structure in-place to LEGALLY maintain that land in your family.
None of which has fundamentally changed since the first ‘colonists’ set foot on “American” soil that was ‘granted’ to them by some royalty that got if from an adventurer who ‘claimed’ it with foot-print and flag.
The REAL and LARGER issue(s) of this are NOT “eminent-domain” (that can be legally fought and HAS been rejected) nor “property-taxation” (which have a system in place for changing, amending, or even stopping them) but the REAL issue of how many people REALLY understand the system of “property” both real and assumed that all this is based on?
From what I keep seeing there are not very many, nor do most really WANT to attempt to understand HOW the system works.
Randy
> The Court decided that while the Parents did NOT OWN the land included in the right-of-way, they WERE entitled to compensation from the pipeline company for the loss of that land.
Think about that for a moment.
I wrote (and Admin quoted)
>>The Court decided that while the Parents did NOT OWN the land
>>included in the right-of-way, they WERE entitled to compensation
>>from the pipeline company for the loss of that land.
Scott replied:
>Think about that for a moment.
I did, long and hard and NOTHING I wrote is out of line for the commentary:
KEY point here: The Parents NEVER “owned” that land. Never. The Utility had PRIOR rights to the land, the article AND THE COURT said so. This was and is the whole ‘missing’ point here. The court came to the conclusion that whent the Parents BOUGHT the property, they had basically “paid” for land that they could not be sold. (It was owned by the utility)
Therefore the Utility was told to “pay-them-back” for the money they spent on land they could not actually posess and the utility has been TRYING to do what the court said. Further the court had concluded that they utility had a prior right to that land as they were there BEFORE the land had been purchased by Englekings parents and therefore the Englekings had NO claim on that land. It’s not theirs, never was but the court felt they should be ‘compensated’ for the fact they didn’t and never did “own” that land.
The Engleking family has every right to GO BACK TO COURT to try and reverse the decision, but this whole situation devolves back into thier lap. The utility was there first, they put the land to use first, they had prior claim by right of occupancy to the Englekings. The court recognized this, the Englekings do not this is their problem not the utilities.
What IS the real issue here? Why does the utilities “prior-claim” by right of use and occupation seem to be “less” important than the “claim” of “we-bought-it-it’s-ours” by the Englekings which failed to stand up as a valid claim in court? If NOT decided by a court who SHOULD have decided who owned the land? If a prior-claim or use is ignored who and how does it get decided who actually “owns” anything?
Randy