cstocks, Let me see now. Here is a little background...I started out trying to get along with this guy when he bought his 1.2 acres, surrounded by my land on three sides, and paid little heed to the folks lined up around the block to tell me how no good crazy he and his wife are. I prefered to make my own assessment even though a friend whose judgement I trust as a lay psychologist in these matters said there would be no long term satisfaction without fencing the guy in. I was wrong, bad wrong. I ran the guy in the computer at the county seat to get the ground truth on some of his "exploits" and interviewed his ex boss (chief of police at Norman, home of the OU football team). My observations and surmises were confirmed and additional data points, in character, were collected.
The neighbor mows some of my property, has a fence jutting out into it, has shot down a large treeof mine with repetitive rifle fire, and most recently has shot down some steel fence posts and claimed the cows knocked it down and he has made demands including one by fax to get a steer as compensation for damage to his garden (cows got in due to his ruining my fence with rifle fire.
As we are in a rural area shooting is legal. Tresspassing, though illegal, is essentially ignored by law enforcement. Shooting onto, across, or at my property is tresspassing even if the shooter is not physically on my property.
OK, Now then... The last time I talked to him in person was the day I was collecting evidence from the tree shooting (cut the tree up and saved the important pieces, full as they were of rifle bullets. That was the morning of 9-11. Soon thereafter I had my lawyer send him a letter requesting that he pick an old flawed set of survey pins, or the new ones placed with great accuracy as THE boundary and I would cooperate as required to make that THE way it reads on my deed, paying any court recording fees. He was given something like 30 days to respond with a non-response signifying his selection of the new pins (only ones I can legally justify without his cooperation). He did not reply as requested by mail but instead called my lawyer and rambled on and on making various random threats.
Now nearly a year later he has not complied with any of my first letter's legal requests and will soon be in receipt of a second letter, my BAFO (best and final offer). I have drafted the letter for my attourney who will add any required legalese and (in his words) translate it into 6th grade English so as not to talk above anyone's head. The neighbor will be given 10 days to produce a written response choosing one of three options I am offering: 1. old pins, 2. new pins, or 3. slight restructure of the shape of his property to improve it in his favor, in my opinion. Likely he will not comply/respond, at least this is what we expect.
Now having notified him twice and a good long friendly neighborly wait in between I will bring suit against him for tresspassing. A result of the disposition of the suit will be a determination by the court of the boundary. Whether or not anything else happens, I then have a court approved boundary along which to build a 5 wire barbed wire fence. The judge, I think, will be impressed by my patience and attempts to be fair and offer options rather than dictate to this neighbor, even though I would be within my legal rights. So happens that the sheriffs deputy that came out and took the last report (shot fence) used to work part time for the prev owner and will testify the fence was in good condition prior to this neighbor moving in.
There is just bunches and bunches more but you get the idea. You can search the tbn archives about crazy neighbor or whatever, this was discussed a lot previously.
I an making no representation that your case is similar and hope that it surely isn't BUT I recommend you do whatever is the minimum to insure there could not be a claim in the future.
Patrick
