Farmer Threatened By Nuisance Lawsuit Sues Back

[kthompson]

Right there sums it up..... The neighbors and conservation groups didn't think he was zoned for that activity, so they challenged it. The court ruled against them. Again, nowhere in that article does it mention the people that filed the suit being "anti-farmer."

Maybe I missed something which is nearly normal, who said they were anti farmer? I really thought we only knew what was in the OP. No idea what was said in court or in interviews not part of what was in the OP. Which at least with court cases here is normally a LOT not reported in the news. But whether they were anti farmer or not to me is a very small part of it, they should have known the zoning of the area and understood what that meant in real life. The zoning we have on our land is for farms, forestry but it also allows many types of businesses. If not all almost every piece that touches us is same zoning. kt

 

[two_bit_score]

Exactly, and the vast majority of lawsuits should NEVER happen. Lawsuits should be so rare as to make the national news. There should be about 2 lawyers in the nation that deal with civil suits. If I was king of the world, you can bet your last dollar there would be some real tort reform in my little perfect world. I would make it not only that you must pay the other sides attorney fees, but you should also get hit with an automatic judgement against you for what ever the amount you attempted to collect from the other side for their trouble. You would think, long and hard before you sued someone in my world.

I hope you would also make it a painful to grossly injure someone to the extent they required medical attention for years just to exist and had no money to pay for their care even initially, had to go bankrupt and lost their job, kids went hungry and dog died all because a knucklehead decide to do something stupid and grossly careless.

Hopefully seeing someone strung up by his nuts in the public square would eliminate the drunk driver who killed the breadwinner of a family of 12 hungry kids.

I've seen both sides professionally and neither are as easy as a lot of people think.

TBS

 

[two_bit_score]

I know an attorney very well that has the quote "If it wasn't for attorney's, we wouldn't need them" on their desk.

Yeah right, I mean, duels always worked so well. :roll eyes:

Tell you a little secret about 'tort reform'; the side wanting it is usually very careful not to want it too much.

TBS

 

[two_bit_score]

In Canada, I would only ever hire a lawyer if they agreed to my conditions.
You only get paid if you win, and once you win and collect the money, you get an agreed to percentage.
Collecting the money seems to be much more difficult than actually winning the case.

And I'm sure you always got the legal representation you paid for. :thumbsup:


TBS

 

[k0ua]

I hope you would also make it a painful to grossly injure someone to the extent they required medical attention for years just to exist and had no money to pay for their care even initially, had to go bankrupt and lost their job, kids went hungry and dog died all because a knucklehead decide to do something stupid and grossly careless.

Hopefully seeing someone strung up by his nuts in the public square would eliminate the drunk driver who killed the breadwinner of a family of 12 hungry kids.

I've seen both sides professionally and neither are as easy as a lot of people think.

TBS

I like the hanging by the nuts in the public square thing. OK, OK, some lawsuits are necessary. BUT I still say there are WAY too many of them, and if you bring suit an you lose, you should pay. People need to think long and hard before they sue. They need to know they are in the right and have be seriously aggrieved before bringing suit.

 

[two_bit_score]

I like the hanging by the nuts in the public square thing. OK, OK, some lawsuits are necessary. BUT I still say there are WAY too many of them, and if you bring suit an you lose, you should pay. People need to think long and hard before they sue. They need to know they are in the right and have be seriously aggrieved before bringing suit.

I can go along with most of that. Loser Pays sounds great until you realize you can be really wronged and injured ( maybe just financially injured ) and can actually be set up to take a beating under Loser Pays. The big corporate guys can pay attorneys millions and so completely overwhelm your sole practitioner that you could get so bogged down in fees and all that you are looking at huge attorney fees and then they make you a settlement offer that is ridiculous and you reject it. Then you go to court and those sharp lawyers convince the jury that you should get a little less than their last offer so even though you 'won' and got a judgement against them some jurisdictions allow them to count all their attorney fees past the pint they made you that offer against you so you turn around and pay them more than you 'won' because you didn't settle. That's all part of the theory of Loser Pays - to encourage settlements between the parties.


TBS

 

[MossRoad]

Maybe I missed something which is nearly normal, who said they were anti farmer? I really thought we only knew what was in the OP. No idea what was said in court or in interviews not part of what was in the OP. Which at least with court cases here is normally a LOT not reported in the news. But whether they were anti farmer or not to me is a very small part of it, they should have known the zoning of the area and understood what that meant in real life. The zoning we have on our land is for farms, forestry but it also allows many types of businesses. If not all almost every piece that touches us is same zoning. kt

They did know the zoning. It was AG and they knew that. What they didn't know was that the straw-compressing he was doing was considered an AG activity. They thought it was crop processing, which is not considered farming, and that would have required a special use permit. And, that permit would only limit the hours, not the activity itself. Nowhere in the article did it say the people were against the straw-compressing activity itself, just the excessive noise, dust and truck traffic 24/7 associated with the straw-compressing operation.

To summarize again...
They knew the zoning.
They thought the activity being performed was not considered AG.
They filed a lawsuit to require the farmer to get a special use permit that would limit the hours of operation.
The court ruled that it was an AG activity and required no special use permit.
They lost the suit.

I'd think they could have found out weather that was an AG related activity or not before filing a lawsuit?

 

[two_bit_score]

They did know the zoning. It was AG and they knew that. What they didn't know was that the straw-compressing he was doing was considered an AG activity. They thought it was crop processing, which is not considered farming, and that would have required a special use permit. And, that permit would only limit the hours, not the activity itself. Nowhere in the article did it say the people were against the straw-compressing activity itself, just the excessive noise, dust and truck traffic 24/7 associated with the straw-compressing operation.

To summarize again...
They knew the zoning.
They thought the activity being performed was not considered AG.
They filed a lawsuit to require the farmer to get a special use permit that would limit the hours of operation.
The court ruled that it was an AG activity and required no special use permit.
They lost the suit.

I'd think they could have found out weather that was an AG related activity or not before filing a lawsuit?

Now that those facts are established it would be nice to know if they had rejected an opportunity to withdraw their suit with each party bearing their own costs and decided to press ahead to a trial or at least to a hearing for summary judgement?

Pretty sure that plaintiff Suzi was told at some point that if she didn't drop her suit that she might be held liable for attorney fees. She or her lawyer had to have been told that.

TBS

 

[NorTracNY]

I like the hanging by the nuts in the public square thing. OK, OK, some lawsuits are necessary. BUT I still say there are WAY too many of them, and if you bring suit an you lose, you should pay. People need to think long and hard before they sue. They need to know they are in the right and have be seriously aggrieved before bringing suit.

I think for me to agree with this, you'd need to allow a new form of legal interigation. If a law is not clear, how do you get the answer without bringing something to court? The lawsuit of this topic is about what is considered farming? MOST people in this country don't think of 24/7 businesses with big trucks coming and going as "farming." That certainly wasn't farming many years ago. Most people don't consider the making of quaker oats as farming. All laws need clarifications and the courts do this through decisions on cases brought before them. Most courts don't make the plantiff's pay because they don't want to stop suits coming because of unclear laws.

 

[aczlan]

Most people don't consider the making of quaker oats as farming. All laws need clarifications and the courts do this through decisions on cases brought before them. Most courts don't make the plantiff's pay because they don't want to stop suits coming because of unclear laws.

As I understand it, this guy is taking bales of straw and compressing them tighter (and making them into larger bales in the process?).
That is repackaging it, not changing the straw like it would be for him to roll oat kernels into rolled oats (or to grind bales of straw into little pieces to put into mixed rations (grain+silage+filler)).

Aaron Z