Posted on 08/06/2021 3:10:26 PM PDT by KierkegaardMAN
For almost three decades, 81-year-old David Lidstone has lived in the woods of New Hampshire along the Merrimack River in a small cabin adorned with solar panels. He has grown his own food, cut his own firewood, and tended to his pets and chickens.
But his off-the-grid existence has been challenged in court by a property owner who says he's been squatting for all those years. And to make Lidstone's matters worse, his cabin was burned to the ground Wednesday in a blaze that local authorities are investigating.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
Huh, what a coincidence!
Old news
See previous threads from this earlier this week.
Live free or die does not mean squatting on someone else’s property without permission.
How friggin’ convenient.
“ Live free or die does not mean squatting on someone else’s property without permission.”
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He supposedly had permission from 30 years ago. But not in writing.
If it’s been allowed to happen for years, then it’s as much his property as the actual owner’s. This should have been dealt with when it first was noticed.
If I had a squatter on my property, that would be the 2nd thing I would do after having him removed (the first would be getting a permit and setting up a training burn with the local fire department.
Otherwise, I’d end up with junkies cooking meth next. Especially after this controversy was featured in the news and local paper.
Lidstone is accused of squatting for 27 years on the private property in Canterbury. The owner of the land had been seeking to tear down the cabin before the fire.
Sometimes you have to take justice into your own hands. The property owner followed all the rules, and a judge ordered the squatter to leave back in 2017. At least it burned while the man was in jail and couldn’t be hurt. If someone built a shack on my land I doubt I would have waited so long...
It was a Huge Health Hazard .
The guy had some nerve placing a shack with no bathroom facilities on someone land .
Related threads
Fire destroys cabin of New Hampshire man forced out of woods
Indeed in some States by putting in improvements and doing things like notoriously occupying the land (meaning among other things, with full knowledge of the original owner) is becomes his.
It’s called, IIRC, Adverse Possession.
Now, it is a claim that is easily disrupted … say if the owner occasionally visits the property.
Adverse possession...covered it in sophomore business law. He had a case.
Health hazard to who?
The man was 81 and looked like he was a decade younger.
Live Free (squatting on someone’s private property) or Die.
Somehow, I don’t think that’s what John Stark had in mind.
The landowner, who is 87, says he did not know until the county informed him expressing concern about zoning violations, etc. He started eviction proceedings immediately and it’s taken 6 freaking years (started in 2015).
> He supposedly had permission from 30 years ago. But not in writing. <
As Perry Mason used to say (or was it Judge Judy?): A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
He lost that case in 2017 and was ordered by the judge to leave. The owner has been trying to get him out since 2015.
Adverse possession?
He was under a court order to vacate. This is absolutely not a case of adverse possession.
Then the occupation wouldn’t be notorious, or adverse.
Also, had he got permission decades ago it wouldn’t be that either, now that I think about it.
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