The story is terribly written. How did Yeager actually take possession of the wall for 18+ years? And doesn’t a single use by Krueger-Cunningham nullify any period of use by Yeager?
I agree. And, how do you use a wall for other than its intended purpose—to give notice of the property line and/or to contain animals, give privacy, etc.. After all, you don’t build on or grow crops on a wall!
The owners were using the wall—as a wall!
Okay, I just found a comment posted at The Daily Camera by the husband of the woman who lost the wall.
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/nov/22/adverse-possession-officials-work-on-land-law/
Posted by cardamomseed on November 22, 2007 at 3:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)
As the husband of the landowner on the MyFox piece mentioned above, I am skeptical of the “fix” for this law proposed by Tupa and Witwer, at least as it was described in the article. How is the land owner protected better from the AP claimant by allowing te claimant to use “well, I thought it was my land” as evidence of anything? Has Jiminny Cricket become the source of lawcrafting around here? In our case, the claimant said exactly that and proferred an erroneous Improvement Location Certificate as evidence that our deeded and staked property was hers! Of course, the claimant also said they had used our property in other ways that they could not document except by their sworn testimony. Since the adverse possession law supposedly assumes that the claiment has the burden of evidence, not the property owner of record, we can only assume from our case and that of the Kirlans that the quality of evidence that can be accepted is too lax. We have pointed out before that the present standard is “preponderance of evidence”, but it used to be “clear and convincing evidence.” Some years ago the Colorado Supreme Court changed that standard. Can the original be re-established? Our belief is that the stricter standard might have raised the bar enough to shoot down both claims. Have Tupa and Witwer considered that approach?
Kirk Cunningham