From: William Levak (wlevak_at_cyberspace.org)
Date: 2004-06-19 03:04:29
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Bo Zimmerman wrote:
> I wonder if this is true.
>
> In Texas, as in 49/50 of the U.S. states (and perhaps the world?) there is a
> legal theory called the common law. What that says in a nutshell is that
> you can gain and lose certain rights over time just through their practice
> becoming commonly accepted. The classic example we were given in school is
> about the person who sits on their porch and watches the kids cross his lawn
> on the way to school every day, and then wakes up one morning and decides to
> say "no"! The kids could claim rightly that the property owner had given up
> his kid-crossing rights over the last 10 years of knowingly letting them do
> so without complaint.
Actually, the classic example is of a driveway or road that the property
owner has let others use for years. This creates a dependence on the use
of this road, which becomes a common law right. That is why the owners of
private roads close them off periodically for "maintenance".
Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list
Archive generated by hypermail pre-2.1.8.