Is this guy defending his liberties or is he a nut?

[MercutioATC]

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06/offgrid_man_jai.php

"In the Pittsburgh area, a man went to jail rather than let the local power company run an electric line through his property. He's also in some hot water for refusing to connect to the local sewer system. Although he’s repeatedly lost in criminal court, William Williams, 76, of Cecil, vows to continue removing the guy wire and its anchor in his yard each time the power company replaces them. For Mr. Williams, it’s all a matter of civil disobedience. He said he refuses to surrender his property rights to the utilities."

The power company has a legal easement. He's destroying their property and potentially creating a dangerous situation. I'm voting "nut", but I'm interested to see what other DUers think.

[jedicord]

1. He's protecting his property.

Can't say he's protecting his liberties, because unfortunately that is just another "liberty" that has been taken away by the law (legal easement).

Can't say he's a nut, 'cause I believe one's property is one's property and the law is wrong.

[populistdriven]

2. the easement shows up on a standard title search

he knew what he was buying

[melissinha]

4. Bingo: Easement

[MADem]

5. He says it's not on his deed, though

He contends Allegheny Power has no right to use his property to secure its pole because the guy wire and anchor are not within the company's right of way. He said the rights of way were not listed on his deed.

But Allegheny Power officials said the company owned the right of way, or it would not have installed the guy wire and anchor.

If he thinks he's right, he ought to take this to land court rather than continually getting tossed in jail via the criminal court system. It's not clear from the article, but it sounds like the courts are addressing the vandalism with the jail terms, and not the essential issue of where the easement/right of way ends.

[MercutioATC]

7. The courts wouldn't have found him guilty without a valid easement.

Notice, the power company claims there IS an easement.

[MADem]

9. Oh, no doubt there is an easement

But you have to wonder if the court did a thorough job of establishing where the easement ended, what the nature of it was, and so on. The focus of the court at that point seemed to be the vandalism, which is why perhaps a land court ruling might be helpful to this guy.

There's just not enough information in the article to really know what the full story is, one way or another.

[slackmaster]

6. That pretty well cliches his status as a crackpot

:nuke:

[Saphire]

3. he's a nut.....defending his property.

[Xithras]

8. Both!

The article doesn't say whether or not the utility really DOES own an easement there. He says they don't, they say they do. His logic is that he didn't see it on the deed, and their logic is that they MUST own the easement, because their wire is there. The question is left unanswered in the article though...kinda irritating. And no, I don't automatically believe the power company...my local city screwed up recently and built a freaking ROAD and utility trench across a big chunk of someones farm. The surveyor goofed, and the plans were based on the position of an existing dirt access road instead of on the actual property lines. When the farmer came out and realized what they'd done, he threatened to take his tractor to the whole thing if they didn't pay him a small fortune. Even though they could have used eminent domain to claim the property, the process takes a while and the owner would have been able to block and remove the entire road while the process went though (legally, it was HIS private road...it didn't belong to the city). In the end, they ended up paying him about four times what the land was actually worth :)