Posted on 01/31/2006 1:23:08 PM PST by Irontank
Two immigrants are now the legal owners of a Douglas-area ranch seized from an anti-immigrant activist. Documents granting the 70-acre ranch once owned by Casey Nethercott to Fatima del Socorro Leiva Medina and Edwin Alfredo Mancia Gonzales were signed by a Cochise County judge on Monday.
Nethercott is serving a five-year prison term in Texas stemming from a 2003 incident on a Texas ranch where he confronted Leiva and Mancia and was accused of pistol-whipping them. He was acquitted of assault but convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Nethercott was a member of the group Ranch Rescue, which works to protect private property along the southern U.S. border.
The Southern Poverty Law Center brought suit against Nethercott on behalf of the two immigrants. Nethercott did not respond and a Texas judge ordered him to pay $500,000.
Also named in the suit were Jack Foote, the founder of Ranch Rescue and the owners of the Texas ranch, Joe and Betty Sutton.
The Suttons settled for $100,000. Foote also didn't offer a defense and was ordered to pay $500,000. Leiva and Mancia were illegal immigrants from El Salvador. They received temporary legal status in the United States as crime victims and are seeking visas to stay longer.
They don't plan to hold on to the ranch, said Kelley Bruner, an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Instead the property will be sold, with the proceeds going to the immigrants
You all are missing the point. The property owners were forced to settle for more than they had, apparently, paying the settlement with the ranch. The other defendants had no interest in the ranch and are presumably judgment-proof.
I will gladly be pistol whipped for a free ranch.
That's not my reading of this article. The defendant is in jail out of state, but there's no indication that he was unavailable. On the contrary, he never bothered to respond to the lawsuit.
Neither did another party, who is presumably not in jail. I wonder why these guys didn't want to fight it?
We don't have a justice system. We used to. But all we have now is a legal system.
I agree with you, however, I disagree strongly with letting Slick off the hook. Both are culpable, and President Bush & the Repubs must act.
This whole issue WILL cause this country to disintegrate.
First, Nethercott never even answered the suit, and second, he tried to shelter the property by transferring it into his sisters name.
Where did you read that the others were judgment-proof? Is that why you think they didn't offer a defense?
And while it does appear that they had no recourse but to hand over the ranch to pay the settlement, that doesn't explain why they never responded to the lawsuit in the first place.
Clintigula should be in jail. It is just that the problem is far worse now than it was under him.
The GOP has no interest in doing what 75% of the people want. They want cheap labor, end of story.
It doesn't matter who the judge is, if you don't respond to a lawsuit, you lose automatically, by default.
He probably could not afford to defend it.
Well, in this case, a legal system is what's called for. It was a civil claim.
I'm still wondering why he didn't respond to the suit. The fact that he didn't respond makes it awfully hard to find fault with the judge's ruling.
So much for property rights in America. But hey, they work cheap, and somebody else pays for their health care, so who cares?
And I agree with you again. That's why they don't get any contributions from me until they take action.
The lawsuit was heard by a jury and the jury ruled against Nethercott.
If Nethercott is your hero, is Nethercott's body guard, Tiny, also your hero?
If you think you can ignore a lawsuit, you run the risk of losing right to your property....
In the 80's or early 90's, did you ever hear of illegals suing and obtaining property??????
No one would even believe it if you told them.
GWB has basically created a whole safe harbor nation with his garbage and everything is now possible. Illegals sue, get welfare, get education, medication, and most other benefits citizens get, without paying corresponding taxes or having similar citizen duties. Why not sign them all up for the draft like all 18 y/o???
They had a million dollars in judgement and got probably 70 grand, which they had to split with the lawyer.
People were being sued for damages before Bush was born.
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