That's where I got my Mesa Mood Ring.
Posted on 07/11/2005 10:04:31 AM PDT by Graybeard58
GLADE PARK, Colo. -- Two locks secure the thick chain that holds the steel gate closing the mountain road.
The brass lock requires a combination, and the chrome lock opens with a key.
The heavy gate, and the fence standing erect on either side of it, bar entry to Mesa Mood Ranch, actor Rick Schroder's New Age-sounding retreat 25 miles southwest of Grand Junction. No-trespassing signs, posted at regular intervals, warn off the uninvited.
In an era when celebrities seclude themselves in grand enclaves throughout the Rocky Mountain West, including David Letterman's Montana ranch and Julia Roberts' New Mexico hacienda, Schroder has announced he's pulling up stakes in western Colorado and offering his 16,000-acre ranch for sale for $29 million -- nearly 10 times what he paid for it 15 years ago.
The code of the pioneer West and current celebrity fixation both play a role in how the one-time child star has found himself the target of a rancorous lawsuit brought by neighbors, who own an adjoining ranch on Pinyon Mesa. It's a Rocky Mountain legal drama about access to land -- as bitter a dispute in the New West as it was in the Old West.
The cast features Rick Schroder, 35, who debuted as a towheaded 8-year-old in the 1979 remake of the movie "The Champ." From 12 to 17, then-Ricky Schroder starred in the television series "Silver Spoons." As he grew older, he changed his name from Ricky to Rick and took roles that challenged his range as an adult actor.
After three years as Detective Danny Sorenson on the television series "NYPD Blue," Schroder is a headliner on the series "Strong Medicine" on the cable TV channel Lifetime.
He plays Dr. Dylan West, described in publicity releases as "a women's health specialist and the charming new partner at Rittenhouse Hospital."
But the handsome, blond actor is cast as the villain by his Western Slope neighbors, who filed a lawsuit against him in November 2003.
Schroder "is a spoiled movie brat who does not possess a smidgen of the integrity of the man he smears," Grand Junction lawyer Clayton Tipping said in a public letter defending his brother, Ronald Tipping, a Grand Junction businessman.
Ronald Tipping's two ranching partners, Rodney Power and William Patterson, are the other two plaintiffs. Tipping and his wife own companies that supply road and building materials, Power is an insurance agent, and Patterson is a retired orthopedic surgeon.
The three ranch owners allege that Schroder trespassed by regularly using a lakeside road across their property to his, rather than following JS Road, a public road that bisects their ranch. JS Road leads to the locked gate at the boundary of Schroder's Mesa Mood Ranch.
Schroder countered that the previous ranch owner and he had the right to cut across his neighbor's land because they had been doing so for decades, according to Clayton Tipping.
The three local owners also allege that Schroder once cut a lock on their gate to cut across their property to his.
Schroder has countersued, making his own claims against the plaintiffs over access on Pinyon Mesa.
The lawsuit has acquired a sharp personal edge that Clayton Tipping traces back six years to a dispute between the three local ranchers and Schroder over 55 acres where the two ranches come together.
The bitterness between the plaintiffs and the actor also has spilled over to engulf a land swap that Schroder proposed to the Bureau of Land Management five years ago. The plaintiffs are among members of the public who have protested the swap, contending the actor is ripping off taxpayers for more than a half-million dollars. The BLM is looking into the protests before the swap receives final endorsement.
"The lawsuit and the land swap are entangled only because they involve the same people and the same general area," Clayton Tipping said, "but they are not related legally."
The dispute is in court-ordered mediation after a trial, scheduled last month, was postponed.
"This is about roads, that's what it's all about," Clayton Tipping said in an interview. "It always makes a difference when someone is driving across your property, no matter who it is."
That's where I got my Mesa Mood Ring.
I like Rick Schroeder, he's always come across as a good guy and a patriot. Never lived next door to him however...
May the fattest lawyer win!
I mean for his client - ALL the lawyers will win.
I like them "movie actor" types too. Why can't they stay in Hollywood?
What was the South Park episode, where Robert Redford said that Hollywood actors move to mountain towns, because they were upset that they had to live in Hollywood.
"And if we can't live in quiet, simple, peaceful mountain towns, then nobody will!"
Well at least Schroeder is a Republican.
Maybe Utah can trade Colorado. We'll take Schroeder...thy can have Robert Redford. Now there's an idea!
My town burned Robert Redford in effigy....back when I was in high school. I'm still wishin' it was the real thing instead!
(oops! Did I say that out loud?)
Wasn't this an episode of King of the Hill a couple of seasons ago? The same thing happened to Peggy's nasty mom. The ranch hands kept calling Hank cityslicker and Hollywood since the rental place accidentally gave him a Range Rover.
Sounds like one of a number of disputes my dad has had with his neighbors, from time to time. Guys just get like this sometimes.
I thought Rick Schroder was great in "The Lost Battalion."
"Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls"
http://www.tv.com/south-park/chefs-salty-chocolate-balls/episode/2438/summary.html
I loved the Fantasia-like ending to that episode.
This probably takes some of the sting out of moving.
Schroder countered that the previous ranch owner and he had the right to cut across his neighbor's land because they had been doing so for decades, according to Clayton Tipping.
If it is true that Schroder (and especially if the previous ranch owner as well) has been allowed to use the road for access in the past then the law may be on Schroder's side in this case, depending on past ownership.
For instance, if the two properties were ever commonly held by one owner, then Colorado easement laws of necessity and/or preexisting use are pretty cut and dried, assuming the easement existed at the time when unity of title was severed.
If on the other hand the two properties were never commonly owned, then a claim for a prescriptive easement would require a showing of continued open, notorious and adverse use of the easement for the statutory period of eighteen years. Schroder's claim that 'they had been doing so for decades' might meet this.
lol yeah.
Sometimes an easement ain't so easy.
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