Stone Walls and Rockheads

A piece on Yahoo! news yesterday told of the problems a resident of Westport, CT, is experiencing over a stone wall he had built in front of his house. It was a replacement for a wall that had stood in the same place for years, so it seemed alright to just build a new one. Later, as it turned out the wall extended six inched onto town property, though when inspectors working for the town visited the site they allowed the construction to go forward. Things would have been fine if the gentleman's neighbors hadn't filed a lawsuit demanding the wall be removed. The legal fees so far amount to $150,000. And the matter doesn't seem close to being settled.

I don't know about you but to me a hundred and fifty grand is a lot of money, far too much to spend on something as stupid as a stone wall. It's the other side of being wealthy, I suppose: do something with your own property and litigious neighbors file lawsuits. It seems that the man who had the wall built, a Mr. Hancock, was perfectly within his rights to build the wall where the old one had stood. If it overlapped town property, as the older one presumably had, then the fault lies with the town; they didn't do their job.

So now Mr. Hancock is out all that money and there is no resolution in sight. I am reporting on this situation because I see a much better - and less wasteful way to resolve the issue. Here goes.

The wall is six inches into town property. So how long is the wall? Sixty feet? Whatever. It can't be much longer, but let's just say it's 60 feet. Instead of all the haggling and miscues, it would have been a simple matter for Westport to lease the thirty square feet of overlap to Mr. Hancock at $100.00 per square foot. That would be $3,000 a year in revenues the town would receive and Mr. Hancock would have to live 50 years longer to run up a bill of $150,000. It would appear that the issue is between Mr. Hancock and the town, thus the lawsuit filed by the neighbor could be thrown out; if it isn't then Mr. Hancock could settle the matter for $50,000 and still be ahead of the game.