People and Trespassing?

The reason why I asked about liability is because we've known people who have actually had people break into their house or have entered into their yard without asking and have gotten bit by their dog and then proceeded to sue. OK, I don't know for sure about the one that had a service man just enter the house and get bit, but the one where a utility worker came in the yard and got bit sued the people and won!

There was one here where a group of teenagers cut a chainlink fence to get into a gravel pit with their dirt bikes. One broke his neck, sued the owner and won PARTIAL liability. The court said the owner should have expected kids to cut the fence and posted a 24 hour guard.

Wow

Usually you all sound so friendly, but let someone go looking for their escaped animals and you get into a tizzy about it. I agree with the poster who lost calf. YOu going to stop at every house? It's not like these folks were out for pleasure. Certainly does not sound very Chrisitan either! Love your fellow man, my arse.

You always hear about stories about crooks suing homeowners but the real question is 'did they win the suit'? Rarely, unless you intentionally harm them. That's why several local cops around here have told me that if someone breaks into your house, shoot to kill.

Trespassers make my blood boil also. If it was me in your situation, I would send at least a half a dozen shots flying over their heads. Let's see how much they enjoy trespassing with bullets flying around them.

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“When I think of what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think, there are no little things.” -Bruce Barton

I'm not in a tizzy about it and I nor my husband went over there or yelling or guns blazing. He simply went down there and asked them what they thought they were doing and that they should have asked permission before driving their truck in and proceeding to gallop across the pasture. It's a matter of respect for other people's properties. Being a Christian doesn't mean being a door mat or letting people walk all over you.

My kids go to the back 40 to go fishing a lot. What if they had started running their cows through there and the kids got in the way and got hurt? At least I could have warned them or told them to be careful of the gullies. As far as I'm concerned it's just common curtisey if the house is right there, before entering someone's fenced in pasture, to stop at the house and ask if it's OK to enter their pasture to fetch your critters.

The problem out here is that we have a lot of people from out of area that feel they have the right to come on our property any time they feel like to go hunting and with it getting so close to hunting season, my husband wanted to see who they were. He was nice about it, but he was also direct and to the point. Now if I had seen their cows running across our pasture and them in hot pursuit, that's another story, but they had been driving up and down the road all afternoon very slowly and everyone out here is very suspicious of any vehicle that's strange as we've had damages done and their cattle weren't even on our property, they just *thought* they were.

Aside from all the arguments for or against is really beside the point. It is illegal to go on to another person's property without getting permission. I don't believe in this state you're even allowed to chase wounded game onto someone else's property without getting permission from the land owner first. I guess it would be the same as if your dog gets loose in town and you're chasing your dog and you find it in someone else's backyard. You knock on the door and ask the person if you may go in their yard and fetch your dog, you don't just go in there and get it. I know, I had to chase my dog on many occassions when we lived in town and there were a few times that she put herself into someone else's yard. You always ask first!

I'll be nice and just say that some of these replys are hilarious.
So some of you think that posted property is the only property that you should NOT trespass on? Or that it's ok IF you are in hot pursuit of an animal? Think again. I know it's aking too much of most people but use some common sense... if it isn't YOUR property then you are trespassing so stay off or ask permission. Period. Getting caught on my property without permission gets you at least a heap of attitude.

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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin~

I agree BigBoy. I have cattle and sometimes they get out too, but I make a point of knowing my neighbours ahead of time and knowing where I can and can't go.

Paint an outline of a body splayed out on the ground in the area of the entrance to the pasture, then put some yellow crime scene tape around the body outline. In front of that post a no trespassing sign...

I do know my neighbors quite well and that includes people that live within a 2 mile raduis, but these guys are not our neighbors. They just keep cattle around here. I'm not even sure if the guys that were here were the guys that own the cattle, they may have just been his cowboys. Some of the people that keep cattle around us don't even live in this county. We had some guy stop by looking for his bull and he wasn't even from this state!

BigBoy posted
So how do you mark your territory? Do you leave the bodies swingin in the breeze?

Yes, if you really want to keep people OUT for whatever reason, you should have bi-Lingual signs, every 50 ft and a fence installed all the way around the property, and common sense tells me if your in a hot pursuit of a animal, you definately don't have time to go to the courthouse and figure out who owns the property!!!

That may be true as you can't go to see who owns every piece of property, but that was not the case here as our house is 1/4 mile from the barn drive and you can see it clear as day and our whole property is fenced and there are 3 driveways, ours which has a gate, an access drive which is gated and locked and the barn drive which does not have a gate, but soon will.
How would you feel if you look out and see two guy drive into your property with a truck and trailer, unload horses and then proceed to split up and ride through your property? Your first thought is going to be "What the heck?!" Especially when we could have told them their cows weren't on our pasture in the first place. We see everything and you can't miss a bunch of big black cows crossing he pasture, believe me, I've seen it before. There is no other way onto our property except through that gate and we would have seen the cows come in and we would have seen them out there grazing.

The man that owns these cattle, if he would take the time to fix the rest of his fence he wouldn't have to worry about chasing his cattle all over. I guess it'll probably take the county to get him to do it. He would have never fixed his fence to keep his cows off the road if the county hadn't forced him into it. His cows were being a major problem. They were on the road more than they were in the pasture and the man that used to live down the road use to get angry because this guys bull would get out and come break into our neighbors pasture and he'd have to catch him and hold him until the guy came and got him. One time our neighbor had this guys bull for almost 2 months before the guy came to get him. So, knowing what I do of his past, I highly doubt "No Trespassing" signs would have stopped him.

Kansas law -- You are entitled to take the animal into possession until damages are paid. Obviously doesn't apply here since there was no animal on your property.


Trespass applies to hunters too -

The act is a crime if the property is posted or fenced (don't try to keep a surveyor off your land in Kansas) --

Letting an animal run free is ordinary negligence. They need to be controlled by a lawful fence --

Thank you Palani.
I guess these guys were criminal as the property is fenced as they did willfully come onto our property knowing that they did not have permission to do so.

It also sounds like next time his cows come for a visit I may have to invite them to dinner until he pays for damages, whatever that would be?

I don't have a problem at all with people looking for their cows. It seems like cows spend a great deal of time getting out, just ask first, that's all. It's not like I'm going to make them pay an entrance fee!

If..as was mentioned ,the owner "left" his bull in someone elses"care" for 2 months..b4 he finally come and got it..That bull would be in my freezer after 30 days.Especially if the owner knew where it had been all this time

You're way too polite.... I've of chased them back onto the road & then a ways down it to boot, if he didn't pick them up the first day without having warned me it would take longer. Let HIM waste his time hunting them all over the county, rather than you lose your hay, if he's not mannerly enough to collect them promptly.

Did he at least pay damages on his own initiative?

From the cases I've heard of, most of the time a trespasser can sue YOU for all damages unless you have it posted AND very securely fenced. Even then, sometimes, due to liberal judges & "attractive nuisance" laws.

Yes, asking was the whole crux of the matter. I'll forgive "hot pursuit" any day of the week, but I would get upset over trespassing just on speculation. What makes THIS case unforgiveable is that the house was in plain sight & it would have taken only a few minutes to stop by.

It's enough of a big deal that you can't tell whether the danged fools are tresspassers, poachers, rustlers, thieves, or crazies..... If *I* saw somebody coming on my land in force, having bypassed my house, I'd be likely to take a gun to check them out.... on the premise that anybody THAT inconsiderate of my property rights wouldn't neccessarily be prone to respect any of my other rights, either. There'd be no way to tell whether I was safe or not.

Huh, I'm real surprised that their property (at least the trails, spots between trees where they'd drive, etc) aren't "naturally" littered with broken off (NOT sawn off, this is very important for some reason) branches from trees with long sharp spines..... stuff like locust or mesquite. Or, ironies of irony, with some jagged broken off sections of antler or deer bone....

After losing a few tires they'd start curtailing the wild behavior or even stop doing it entirely. And living 1.5 hrs away like they do, and being thrill seeking lazy idiots like they sound, they'd neither ever get a chance to SEE the branches fall (carried in by tornado or windstorm, eh?) nor want to be faced with the work of cleaning them up.

Isn't it nice when entirely natural acts of god work to improve people's behavior?

In California, even criminal tresspassers can sue you! If your stair bannister breaks while they're leaning on it, they can sue you for medical expenses AND pain/anguish.

Heck, in one case up in Palm Springs, a burger went in the second story back window of an apartment complex using a 20 foot ladder. Alas for him, the apartment belonged to an exotic dancer noted for using rather large snakes (pythons & boas) in her act (at the climax of which, the snakes were all she was wearing).... and she always let them roam the apartment when she was out. He was so startled, he fell out of the window backwards and broke several bones. Alas for her, he sued HER as the cause of the accident and WON in court.

I also recall a case where a man (shortwave radio hobby) had a private radio tower in his back yard. The courts made him fence it in with 10' chainlink, and then STILL decided against him when a neighbor (whose son had been one of several boys who scaled the fence in order to climb the tower) sued him for damages over the boy's broken arm.

I've heard it said the best thing to do with a burgler is shoot him dead.... so he can't sue you.

This whole "hot pursuit" idea is kinda funny. It's not like a rodeo where riders are roping and branding. My experience with cattle, or most any other domestic, is you gather them in using a calm, easy manner. Wild "hot pursuits" only stir them up more and aggrivates the situation and only serves to put the animals, property, and any unlucky person in danger. I ain't buying using the hot pursuit thing to avoid asking permission, or at least trying to. Good friends and neighbors generally already have these sorts of understandings already worked out. If I have to tread somewhere where I'm unsure of the rules of the owner, I ask.

I'd have been peeved and run them off too.