So, if I trim my grass on my property beside a neighbor’s fence—or fix a few rocks on my side, I can claim that his entire fence is mine? I’d like to know more about the evidence in this case. I’m not sure how a non-owner can prove notorious (including exclusive), hostile and continuous use of a rock wall which serves as a dividing line between properties. The public policy behind adverse possession is to ensure efficient use of land. I don’t understand how an ancient wall fits in here.
Also, given modern platting, how could a judge—who surely knows about official surveys, “mistake” the wall as hers? And, once finding out she’s wrong, what is the moral caliber of a Judge who grabs land under the law from her neighbor. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe utilizes the courts to grab land from white farmers. Just because it may be legal, doesn’t make it moral.
Regardless, it is unseemly in the least for a sitting judge to get involved in such a land grab when there surely existed objective evidence of property lines. Subjecting her neighbor to a process dominated by the judge’s own colleagues gives all sorts of appearances of impropriety.
what they should have done was to claim that they gave the judge permission to use the wall. However this case looks to me like one judge ruling for another judge rather than being decided on the merits. the way the facts look to me there is no possible way that the party that lost could have actually discovered the adverse possession.