I’m not asking what I should do - I’m just curious what others would do.
I came home today to find my neighbor dumping grass clippings in my front woods - without permission.
The part of me that is territorial got annoyed pretty quickly. Hey! That’s my yard!
The part of me that tries to step back and ask: Did it really change the quality of your life? Stepped back and asked that question. Since the answer was no, I went on about my business.
There’s still a part of me that thought she was being pretty ballsy.
Depends upon the size of the woods and the visibility of the dumping. A suggestion that you’d be delighted if he were to put the clipping on your compost heap would probably work wonders.
If you don’t draw the line at your literal property line, where will you draw it? Where will she think the line is? Isn’t there a legal principle that says if you don’t object, you’ve implicitly given permission? Qui tacet consentire videtur (“Silence gives consent”), perhaps?
She was, indeed. Minimum, I’d ask her to please not do it again.
Violence is my initial response to every offense. I haven’t changed THAT much.
More seriously: she’s trespassing on your property. It’s a tiny trespass, but as others have noted upthread, silence gives consent, and consent leads to escalation. I would ask her, nicely, not to do it again, probably in such a way to as to find out whether the neighbor and I were in agreement as to where the property line is.
Repeat offenses, of couse, lead to a vicious egging of her car.
The legal principle at work is called “adverse possession”. A friend of mine used it to move her (beach-front!) property line several feet to the north. The owner of the adjacent property was preparing to sell his home, and had the property line re-surveyed to make sure he had correctly stated the property’s boundaries. When he discovered that wind, rain, and erosion had caused a shed from my friend’s property to straddle the line, he chose to file suit in court demanding that the shed be demolished (not demolished or moved - just demolished). He never stopped by to talk, sent a letter, or made a phone call – he just filed suit. My friend had just finished getting her law degree and decided to teach him a lesson in neighborly courtesy.
The shed had moved two or three feet across the line, and so she claimed adverse possession of a three-foot-wide strip of land parallel to the property line. She ended up adding several hundred square feet to her beach-front lot. He had even done the court the favor of stating and entering into the record all of the facts that supported her claim. I don’t know if he had representation… if he did I hope he didn’t have to pay for it.
The moral of the story is: make sure that dumping and composting are not land uses that can lead to a claim of adverse possession in your state, and politely tell your neighbor that you’d love to have their clippings in your compost heap rather than your front woods and that you’ll even share the compost with him/her when planting season arrives. Also, be courteous and avoid filing suit until you’re sure they don’t have any freshly-minted lawyers in the family.
Is the neighborhood dark at night? Do I have a rake? If so, gather the clippings up, take a flashlight to light my way, and dump them in her driveway during the wee hours. It should send the message that her clippings belong in her yard.
How likely are the clippings to be infested with fleas, or ticks would be some of what I’d wonder. Plus, she’s dumping her litter into your yard and making it your issue. Once might not be a problem, but how about an entire Summer’s worth in a mound? What will that pile be killing? Would it be an attractant for snakes or the like? (I honestly don’t know, I know they like brushpiles, but I don’t know if grass clippings count?) I’d ask her to stop, and start documenting. It’s jerkish. She shouldn’t dump her unwanted stuff into the laps of others, and leave it for them to deal with. It may be just that she’s trying to save a buck or two, but it is at your expense.
I disagree. The legal principle that will be at issue here is a “constructive easement.” I’m pretty drunk right now, but I can tell you that the OP’s situation is missing at least two elements of adverse possession. However, he (she?) could still lose certain property rights by establishing a practice of quiet acquiescence. The OP won’t lose ownership of the land in question, but he (she?) could lose the right to tell the neighbor to quit dumping on his (her?) land.
It’s just rude to dump something on someone else’s property without express permission. When it comes to private property the owner has the right to say no to dumping anything uninvited on his/her property.
Did she see you catch her? If so, did she look guilty or embarrassed?
I think if she’d seen me and looked guilty, I’d leave it at that and hope it was enough of a deterrent to stop her doing it again. If she hadn’t seen me, I might try to make clear at the time that I’d seen and wasn’t thrilled about it. If she saw me and didn’t look guilty I think I’d say something along the lines of “I’d really rather you didn’t do that in my garden”.
