Comment Re:ohhh ... EULA (Score 1) 546
Before we throw away centuries of reasoned legal development because some guy on slashdot has a fetish for personal property rights, you might want to consider that the purpose of adverse possession laws was to encourage productive land use. If you're using the land, you know if someone is trespassing. If you're not using it, you lose it. It's like a spoiled kid who takes no interest in a long-neglected toy, but demands its return the moment someone else starts playing with it.
Further, many jurisdictions require the would-be adverse possessor to have a reasonable good faith belief that no one else has a better claim to the land. Many, if not most states also require a would-be adverse possessor to pay property taxes every year during the statute of limitations (usually around 9 years). Then it's a simple matter of a rightful landowner checking with the local government once every 8 years and 364 days to see if anyone else is paying a property tax on their land. If that's too much trouble for someone who owns land they're not even using, then they don't deserve it, sorry.
As a practical matter, adverse possession claims rarely work, largely because of the obstacles I just mentioned. So even if you're right about adverse possession being "one of the stupidist laws on the books," it's not exactly a major problem. This is just like right wingers clamoring for "tort reform" when in every case of an excessive jury award they could point to, they fail to mention that judges routinely reduce the final award drastically. Often, these awards are even further reduced on appeal. As for your car example, report it stolen. If the cops don't recover it in 9 years, they're not going to anyway, regardless of whether the thief claims adverse possession. Finally, since adverse possession is a common law doctrine, it's not actually "on the books."
Further, many jurisdictions require the would-be adverse possessor to have a reasonable good faith belief that no one else has a better claim to the land. Many, if not most states also require a would-be adverse possessor to pay property taxes every year during the statute of limitations (usually around 9 years). Then it's a simple matter of a rightful landowner checking with the local government once every 8 years and 364 days to see if anyone else is paying a property tax on their land. If that's too much trouble for someone who owns land they're not even using, then they don't deserve it, sorry.
As a practical matter, adverse possession claims rarely work, largely because of the obstacles I just mentioned. So even if you're right about adverse possession being "one of the stupidist laws on the books," it's not exactly a major problem. This is just like right wingers clamoring for "tort reform" when in every case of an excessive jury award they could point to, they fail to mention that judges routinely reduce the final award drastically. Often, these awards are even further reduced on appeal. As for your car example, report it stolen. If the cops don't recover it in 9 years, they're not going to anyway, regardless of whether the thief claims adverse possession. Finally, since adverse possession is a common law doctrine, it's not actually "on the books."
