I think he might have grossly misread Walden. Or his copy must have a typo.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live destructively, to front only the inessential material excess comforts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I did not in fact own as many things as I could have.”
That house is a monstrosity but Thoreau always did exaggerate the “I went into the woods” bit. Even back in his day Walden Pond was a far cry from anything resembling wilderness. It already had a railroad running right next to it, a short distance from his cabin, and was a popular place for the locals to visit on hot days. It was less than 2 miles from the Emerson house where he had most of his meals prepared and got his laundry done.
If they did their due diligence when buying the properties, their lawyers should have told them all about the public road.
This case reminds me of the time my father-in-law had to sue a neighbor for encroaching on his land in rural Virginia. It was a big deal because my father-in-law’s cow would use this land. The other person was told that this was his land when he bought the property and the surveyor backed him up. In court the surveyor said the basis of his opinion was that the previous landowner said that this was his land, so it must be. This was despite that years ago my father-in-law had a friendly lawsuit with a previous-previous owner of the property which established the property lines. Once the surveyor gave his deposition the lawsuit was dropped.
In this case I wouldn’t be surprised if the wealthy landowner was told that this public land was his. And their opinion was that if they paid for it they must own it, even if the seller had no right to sell it to them.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the wealthy landowner was informed of the public access and didn’t care because his wealth entitles him to ignore the rules that the rest of us have to follow.
No argument here. And even then I may be overly generous and he might have conceived that this public space belongs to him all in his own. In either case, he has been told very loudly that this isn’t his, he has cost the tax payers a lot of money, yet he still trying to claim it. I hope the county stopped collecting his trash.
I also hope that continued lawsuits require him to pay all costs for all parties up front.
Who maintains the road?
That question is actually the crux of the case. The short version (as I understand it) is that a now-defunct county government body declared in 1932 that it would stop maintaining the road. Except the current government has loosely maintained the road, or at the very least taken legal action to ensure that the road is properly maintained by abutters — which has mostly been performed by Harvard University, who owns most of the property around there. There was no “official” deal in place there I guess though, and a few years back, Harvard dropped the ball on maintenance, so the town government sued them to ensure that the road remained safe and accessible. Therefore, the town government argues, they have indeed been maintaining the land recently, despite that 1932 ruling made by a government that no longer exists.
New England also has some weird antiquated property laws leftover from colonial times. My sister almost bought a house on Cape Cod, but on the day they were set to close, the next door neighbor sued the current owners. The neighbor had had a sort of handshake deal with the owners that he could drive his boat over their lawn to get to the beach. That arrangement had been in place for over two decades, which arguably gave him squatter rights to the land, and he was suing to keep his easement in place (presumably out of concern that my sister would buy the house and then prevent his boat from accessing the beach).
Needless to say, my sister did not buy the house, cuz she didn’t want to live next to that guy.
And there might be a third possibility, that he damn well knows it’s not his, and is just trying to take it, and bully the town into letting him have it, by making it very expensive to fight him over it.
I would not have thought that because a road isn’t maintained, it becomes land up for grabs by local landowners. Even if it did, what would privilege the new houseowner over anyone else.
Maybe the assholes also had a shitty realtor who told them that the land belonged to them as part of the sale, and they never asked their property lawyer for clarification? (Though even then, they’d still be assholes for the rest of this)
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