My fence was damaged in the recent post-Ike aftermath. It has been turned into insurance and is in the process of being repaired, however my neighbor is demanding that I fix the fence NOW because she doesn’t want her dog to get out.
This is my fence and is on my property. My neighbor does not have a fence and is, essentially, using my fence as her own fence. Do I have any legal obligation to continue providing my fence to her, so that I am not liable for her dog (or if she had kids, her kids)?
Is this in anyway related to: a) existing easements, where people can continue using a road through my property, or b) lawsuits where a burglar is injured during a robbery, due to faulty construction?
i can’t address the legal issues, but there are some other things you can think about:
It’s her dog, ultimately it’s her responsibility to keep it under control. Suggest to her that she buy some rope and tie her dog to her house–you don’t want her beast digging up what’s left of your flower garden now, do you? If YOUR fence is damaged, that does not eliminate her responsibility to control her dog. What if there never had been a fence?
Your insurance policy likely has a clause that will pay for “temporary repairs.” Get some rabbit fence and staple it across the gap in the fence, add this to the rest of your insurance claim as part of the cost of the damage.
It’d be interesting to hear her response if you were to tell her that you were simply going to remove the fence, but that if she wanted one, you wouldn’t object to her installing a new one on her property.
As (almost) always with legal questions, it depends on the jurisdiction. If you’re in Florida, for example, then you have no obligation to build or maintain a fence around your property unless you keep livestock or dangerous animals, under state law. On the other hand, your county, city or even homeowners’ association may have rules in place which do require you to build or maintain a fence.
If your neighbor doesn’t have a fence at all, then you can assume to some degree that your area doesn’t have such legislation (or rules).
So, where d’you live, eh?
ETA: You almost certainly have no liability in the event that harm comes to the dog. You may, if you live in a pure comparative negligence jurisdiction, have liability in a civil case if the dog harms somebody on your property- the neighbor’s argument would be that she didn’t put up a fence because you had one, and cannot be held solely responsible for faulty fencing on your property, and you could have reasonably foreseen that the dog might harm one of your guests, and the court could find you partially at fault (say, 10%, which means you/your homeowners’ policy pays 10% of the judgment). That would be limited to the extremely short term, though; if you still haven’t fixed the fence in two years and have informed her that you don’t plan to, she cannot reasonably argue that she was waiting for you to fix your fence, etc.
I’d be interested to hear her response if you told her she better damn well keep her dog on her property, or you’ll have it trapped by Animal Control.
As a homeowner with a fence, I would be thoroughly flabbergasted to find out you had even the slightest shadow of a responsibility to keep any portion of the fence in any particular level of repair, excepting if the fence itself posed a danger or was an “attractive nuisance”.
Are the fences with her other neighbors okay? Are they hers, or is she sponging on the other side too?
We just replaced our fences, and it was a community project, in that we each paid half for the parts running on our properties. You might suggest that she pay her fair share of the fence between your property and hers. If not, you have the option of choosing one with a very ugly back side.
I don’t think it has anything to do with easements. She benefits from the fence because it keeps her dog in her yard, but she’s not entitled to its use. It would be like if you had a pool and commonly invited her over to use it. It would be like if you had an apple tree on your property and let your neighbor pick apples from it. Your neighbor wouldn’t gain any right in the use of the tree, so you wouldn’t need the neighbors consent to chop it down.
In rural Vermont, neighbors were equally responsible for the maintenance of border fencesfences. If there was no fence, and one farmer wanted to build one, historically he was able to require the neighbor to cough up half the cost.
As suburbanization progressed, this rule has been more or less discarded.
When I moved into my home it had a split rail fence around the back yard and went along a side of my house that had no windows that I never saw.
However it went along the neighbors main backyard that he used with lots of flowers and gardens along it.
He complained that it was falling down and needed repair. It was and it did.
So I just completely removed it.
Then he got mad because he liked the fence being there.
I told him he was free to replace it if he liked.
Well, in most places with building codes, the “ugly side” is required to be inward facing. For chain link, there’s no difference. But for wooden fences, the ugly side is supposed to be facing your own property.
Odd coincidence–I went through this a few weeks ago, with a neighbor whose puppy got killed by a car after escaping his yard through my falling-apart fence. I was particularly nonplussed by the fact that the fence was in poor condition when he moved in, but he relied in it to contain his dog nonetheless … :smack:
As far as I’ve been able to determine, I don’t have any liability. I’m finally fixing the fence anyway–regardless of my legal responsibility, I do feel bad about the dog. I hadn’t fixed it partly because of my dispute with that house’s owner (the occupant rents)–a lot of the damage to the fence was caused by the previous tenants. :mad: We asked the owner to share the cost of repairs, he said he’d “think about it and get back to us”. The current renter told us that his landlord told him the he’d talked to us about the fence and not gotten any response. :mad: :mad:
That was actually dog damage-the previous tenants had an enormous bull terrier named Chico, who probably could have pulled down a brick wall. Wonderful, sweet, animal, but he really didn’t like being confined to that little yard. Go figure.
I hadn’t fixed it partly because of my dispute with that house’s owner (the occupant rents)–a lot of the damage to the fence was caused by the previous tenants. :mad: We asked the owner to share the cost of repairs, he said he’d “think about it and get back to us”. The current renter told us that his landlord told him the he’d talked to us about the fence and not gotten any response. :mad: :mad: