Sometime I get lucky when I spew legal analysis. To whose attention do I sent the bill? There's the fee for the legal analysis, and the surcharge for the reasoned legal analysis, and the sur-surcharge for being right.
Ha. Yes it's pretty obvious, isn't it, when you bother to take an informed but unbiased look at the situation.
I am a pro-property rights conservative. But I also respect the law. And after seeing the way some developers flout the law, aided by corrupt local officials --and after seeing the harm these developers do to existing neighborhoods-- I've gained an appreciation for wetlands law.
My suspicion is the Sacketts knew darn well they were violating the law. Mr. Sackett owns an excavating and land filling company! He does plenty of work in the area.
So I find it totally unbelievable that he didn't do his due diligence.
In fact, if you read some of the other articles that have been written about this case, you will find that Mr. Sackett DID hire an expert to determine if the lot had wetlands on it. And guess what? The expert determined that there were wetlands on the lot.
Mr. Sackett didn't like that answer, so he kept on hiring more experts to evaluate the lot ... until he got the answer he wanted.
Then Sackett filled those wetlands in. Looks to me like he just thought he could get away with it.