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Jewish World Review Oct. 11, 2005 / 8 Tishrei, 5766 A Faulty Law, a Feud, a Fatality By Jonathan Turley
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Last month John Frederick Ames, a bankruptcy lawyer from Richmond, was
acquitted of the murder of his neighbor, Oliver "Perry" Brooks [Metro, Sept.
17]. It was the latest chapter in a story worthy of William Faulkner that
concerns an arcane 1887 law and a state legislature that refused to repeal
it.
The dispute that led to Brooks's death began in 1989, when Ames, who had
purchased a 675-acre Caroline County farm from a widow facing bankruptcy,
sent his neighbors a registered letter informing them that he was going to
build a fence around his property. The letter also said that he was going to
charge his neighbors for half the cost of the fence, which amounted to
thousands of dollars. Ames said the 1887 law allowed him to bill them for
the fence even without their consent.
Ames's neighbors, who included retirees on fixed incomes, received bills of
$6,000 to $45,000. All of them, including Brooks, who was living on $400 a
month from Social Security, refused to pay. Ames had billed Brooks $45,000
for his share of the fence. Ames reportedly offered to forget about the
$45,000 if Brooks would deed over some of his land, but Brooks refused. The
case went through the courts, and in 1991, Ames finally prevailed in the
Virginia Supreme Court.
His neighbors then scraped together the money for the fence — all but
Brooks, that is, who continued to refuse to pay. Ames subsequently sued his
neighbor for $450,000 for fence damage caused by a bull that Brooks owned.
The bull repeatedly broke the fence and strayed onto Ames's cattle farm.
Ames called these bull incursions an "intentional disregard" of his rights.
Brooks responded with obstinacy and anger.
The bad blood finally boiled over in April 2004, when Brooks's bull once
again strayed onto Ames's land. Despite court orders barring him from
entering Ames's property, Brooks went to retrieve his livestock. An armed
Ames told him to leave the animal. When Brooks brandished a stick he used to
herd the bull, Ames shot in the face and then four more times.
Ames said the shooting was in self-defense. But his acquittal by a jury last
month on a murder charge on the basis of self-defense isn't the end of the
story. Ames still may get the land that he was seeking from Brooks. He
previously sued the Brooks family for $11.3 million in an action that
originally cited everything from infliction of emotional distress to
terrorism. He recently withdrew that action, but he still has a lien on the
Brooks property and an outstanding fence payment that could exceed $150,000
with interest. The Brooks family is suing Ames for wrongful death.
Ames may fit the stereotype of a lawyer who will use any law to his
advantage, regardless of the cost to others, but the Virginia General
Assembly deserves equal blame for the mess that culminated in the death of a
man. It repeatedly failed to repeal the archaic law that allowed the feud to
get going in the first place.
When the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ames in 1991, it noted that
Virginia was out of step with the common-law rule that a landowner's
boundary line is a lawful fence and that a cattle owner is liable for
trespass by his animals. Virginia, however, does not impose such liability
on livestock owners and allows them to force neighbors to pay toward
"fencing out" livestock. Despite the feud and requests for the law to be
changed, the legislature did not act. Only after Brooks was dead and Ames
was facing a murder charge did it change the law — and then only to exempt
landowners without livestock, which would not have protected Brooks.
The common law and most states impose costs on livestock owners for any
damage that their animals cause to a neighbor. This sensible "fence-in"
approach recognizes that a livestock owner should not be able to impose the
cost of his or her enterprise on neighbors.
A fundamental purpose of the law is to reduce conflicts among neighbors by
maintaining clear, consistent and fair rules. The Virginia legislature
clearly failed in that duty. It may be true that good fences make good
neighbors, but the Brooks killing shows that bad laws, like bad fences, make
for bad neighbors.
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JWR contributor Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University. Click here to visit his website. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Jonathan Turley |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
