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We are at our wits end here. Some of you may have seen posts I've made previously over the past year about the horrendous legal battle we've been involved in for the past three years. We are in central Calif., next to the national parks in the lower Sierra Nevadas. We bought a beautiful little farm, and moved out here 7 years ago.
Three years ago, our idiot neighbor managed to get himself killed, and his mother started coming back up here from her house in Fresno. Turns out, she also owned this property. To make a very long story short, she and her brother-in-law, who shares that property, decided they were going to overrun us with their cattle. When we refused to rollover, they said, ok--we'll just take your land then.
They had this bogus survey done, which the surveyor we hired since then, says is seriously flawed. We thought our 100 year old boundary fence and easement road would prevail. Instead, that particular judge let them run with it. He said they couldn't close our road, but they erected this 6 ft. high barbed wire and rusty corrugated sheet metal junkyard wall on their "new" boundary line. This put it all along in front of our house, and on both sides of our driveway. These people tore down our ancient boundary fence, and tore down a long section of our new white board fencing.
We had a trial set for October of last year. There was a final settlement conference on the Friday before. The judge this time we’ve been thru five judges in three years) personally went back and forth between the two parties in an effort to negotiate a settlement. Before the lunch break, this was presumed to be accomplished. We gave up a good deal to keep this situation from going to trial. When we came back from lunch, the other side's attorney came back late,threw a document in our atty's lap and said, “There’s your settlement agreement. You can either sign that or we’re going to trial on Monday”. It was a very one-sided affair, and as everyone has agreed since, very poorly written. It contains very little of what had been agreed upon before lunch that day. We said, we can't sign something this biased without some major revisions. In the short amount of time left, we negotiated as much as we could. It was still really awful, but we were just trying to put this mess behind us and be done with it. There were a number of items sticken, and handwritten changes that everyone had to initial.
As soon as we got home, the neighbors started breaking the agreement. They immediately turned their cattle back out, who came right back over, and out on the roads again. One of them came all the way down to our barn, and when I tried to herd it off, trampled across my foot, causing permanent neurological damage. The neighbors then spent the entire month of November building this big dirt bank and retaining wall in the middle of our easement road. It made it nearly impossible for egress/ingress of large hay trucks, or other necessary large vehicles, including a fire truck. In attempting to get thru, considerable damage was done to my own truck, a one-ton dually. Our atty. immediately began sending letters to the other attorney, demanding that the wall be taken back down, and that it was a breach of the contract. These were all ignored. Because of these breaches of the settlement agreement, and their ongoing uncooperative behavior, we elected to not pay them any sum until they were rectified.
In the meantime, we were doing our best to meet our requirements for the settlement agreement. We got to tear down their junkyard wall (yeah!). It required our surveyor to lay out this whole new boundary line, and so forth. He did that, all of the stakes were up. By May, we were ready to start putting in our new boundary fence and front gates, grading the easement road, etc. When our grading contractor came the first day, one of these neighbors jumped up onto his dump truck and tried to pull him out thru the open window. He had to roll his window up, and cut his shirt loose out of their grip to get away.
Our fencing contractor spent about a month putting in lovely new stone gate pillars, and 6-ft. cedar privacy fencing along the new line. The day after he finished, the neighbors came over and destroyed half of the new fencing. Approx. $10K worth of damages. The cops told us it was felony property destruction, but refused to arrest them. The neighbor told them, and they included it in their report, that her attorney told them to destroy the fence.
We finally decided to file a motion to enforce the agreement, going for damages and attorney's fees. Their atty. tried to pull a fast one, and hurriedly filed something first when he found out we were going to file. This guy is the worst kind of snake. He has continually twisted facts and outright lied thru the entire process. He said from the beginning that his intention was to bankrupt us. He filed all kinds of frivolous motions that we would have to pay our atty. to address, while he boasted that he had never charged his clients for anything. This last judge has ignored some of the later negotiated portions of the settlement agreement. In his most recent filing, the other atty. has arrogantly stated that he purposely did not cross out the lines in one paragraph in particular that he was dictated to, and which were negotiated, in order to benefit his clients. He took advantage of the hurried situation, its confusion, and the trust of our attorney and that judge.
This judge had issued an order now where it is apparent he did not listen to our atty. or our surveyor. It not only gives the other side even more than the already much biased document already had, it looks like he's even trying to take away some of our prescriptive rights. It appears that he's going to let them get away with all of the property damages, the numerous physical assaults, theft, libel, slander, and some of our animals killed. We're afraid he may also try to stick us with their atty's fees, as well as, another small fortune in additional costs.
We have always tried to abide within the law, and we are getting railroaded in return. The other side has constantly taken the law into their own hands, and been reward for it (the D.A.'s office was able to tell us they all have criminal records). We've taken out so many loans over the past few years for this, we are totally tapped out. The well is dry. Our atty. is bailing out on us after this next hearing. We are in far worse shape than we we started--it looks like we're losing this chunk of land, possibly being able to get in/out of here, and will still be overrun by these people's cattle. We have lost all faith in the justice system here. It appears to be a good old boy's network. The cops have never helped us here, and in fact, I ended up getting brutalized by one of them. I have talked to the District Atty's office, the presiding judge over this judge, the Bar Assoc., and Senator Boxer's office. No one will help us. I had to call my elderly, disabled parents yesterday and tell them I was not going to be able to come back there for xmas. We're not even putting up a tree this year, not buying any presents. It just seems kind of pointless.
Are there any other ideas out there? We love our beautiful mountain ranch. We're not leaving. But this is killing us. Thanks for listening to this long sad story.....
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