Court Says Company Had No Right to Be There - After 230 Years Ep. 7.216

welcome once again to latos law here's steve lato nowadays we drive from place to place we don't think about how difficult it was to get around back in the old days and you know nowadays we think nothing about you know hop in your car and drive a couple hundred miles in a day and all along your crossing bridges and going through things and and over things and tunnels and all kinds of stuff which were not around a long time ago and so some of those old things are still around if you look for them they're becoming less common and what's crazy is that up until recently there's a ferry across the potomac river that had been there for 230 years 230 years and now they're going to close because of a recent land dispute and the weird thing about this is this is the last ferry so at one point there were a bunch of ferries to get you across the potomac if you wanted to get across on foot or you were on horseback or you had a wagon and in later years if you've got a car you want to get across the potomac you could go find a bridge someplace or take the ferry well this is from mymcmedia.org suzanne pollock wrote it but also it's written up in the hill by joseph choi rafi sent it to me white's ferry is ending its 230-year run over a land dispute they've been taking commuters across the potomac since the late 1700s and they just stopped now because of the court ruling and they're between montgomery and loudoun counties right around thanksgiving the loudoun virginia county circuit court issued a decision between the ferry operator and a private land owner in virginia that declared there was no legally established public or private landing area on the rockland farm's property where the ferry had been operating all these years the two sides could not negotiate an agreement that would allow the ferry to keep going so the privately owned ferry has ceased operations according to the news release loudoun county was not involved in the legal dispute although the county remains concerned about the outcome from a regional transportation perspective it states in the news release and that's the thing there's only one way across around this area if you can't cross here now you've got to go someplace else and what's weird is i remember not so long ago in macomb county michigan uh i believe it was i-94 stretch of i-94 and there's a bridge over i-94 that allowed people to get very quickly from an exit to their town and that bridge over was being maintained one year and they shut it down completely and i remember them showing the alternate routes these people had to take to get home when they couldn't just do the little simple thing or as it was always convoluted almost like a rube goldberg device to get home and so it's interesting how this stuff evolves montgomery county executive mark elrich also expressed his concern in a tweet he said the end of white's ferry is a deeply concerning issue he noted that he directed montgomery county department of transportation the county attorney and the loudoun county government to determine how best to dr to address the closure uh in its news release white's ferry noted that it regrets to inform the public that it will uh cease operation over the potomac river the circuit court of loudoun county virginia has ruled that no public landing exists on the virginia shoreline at white's very road and the ferry is prohibited from landing at that location in virginia that's the news release as of the date of this press release loudoun county virginia has declined to establish a public landing at that location historic white's ferry is the last of about a hundred ferries that used to operate on the potomac river recently cost five dollars per car and two dollars per pedestrian to get across on the ferry the ferry followed a wire cable to cross the potomac so the hill also covered it and again talks about how widely reported this is dc ist also reported it and the conflict comes from the location of the landing site on rockland farm which was given to the ferry in 1871 but the problem is the location was never appropriately marked on a map okay and so the lack of that's what's causing all confusion uh the court ruled that no public landing exists on the virginia shoreline at white's ferry road and the ferry is prohibited from landing at that location in virginia now the man who is currently running this his father is the one who had relaunched the ferry service in 1946 after they'd been stopped for about a decade his family made the decision to end the ferry service because of court order we knew there was an injunction coming that we couldn't land in virginia so we made a decision it would make no sense in opening up for just the one last week um the biggest question here apparently according to judge is that it was uncertain whether the landing was actually on public land evidence the ferry landing has been in the same place for a long period of time even back to 1871 may have persuasive value on the broader issue of location but does not provide reasonable certainty regarding the more specific issue of that location one of the owners of the farm that's at the center of this told dcs that her family had no intention of shutting down the service and had merely attempted to reach an agreement beforehand the owners decided they would just walk away from the business we did not shut down the theory we tried everything to keep it running the man who's running the ferry said that the deals that were offered were too expensive for the ferry to keep operating he did not say whether he thought the ferry service would ever run again dc has noticed that many local politicians weighed in on the ferry's closing one politician wrote this needs to be fixed immediately white ferry keeps so many vehicles off of 15 495 and 270 each day it's an important part of our transportation infrastructure town commissioners from the nearby village said the poolsville commissioners are actively working with montgomery county and state of maryland officials in an attempt to keep the ferry operational so what's weird about this is this business has been operating for a couple hundred years and apparently been doing it at the same place and one side of this ferry is apparently embarking and disembarking on land adjacent to or part of a piece of private property and the people who've run and owned that land right now have said well we think that's on our property i know people say but what about adverse possession well this articles i actually read three different articles on it don't address that issue i don't know what the real issue here is because you would think that 230 years of use would get you something but it also might be that because they've apparently shut down or reopened a couple times at least once but we don't know that they've always been at the exact same spot that's one of the issues and what's weird is i've read cases about adverse possession or property disputes and you'd be surprised at what kinds of evidence they'll have to look at to determine whether or not something's been used for 200 years they start bringing in things like the the old folks who are still around to go oh yeah i remember my grandfather used to tell me such and such and generally speaking stuff that was told to you by your grandfather 50 years ago and he's been dead for you know 45 is not terribly reliable or acceptable in most courts but if that's all you got to go on sometimes that might be what you do and you know we've also talked about rivers and whether or not a river is navigable and navigability of rivers is often defined by whether or not you can float a log down it or if they ever could and some people actually brought in the old folks who did the logging a long time ago they might not be logging in the area anymore but back when they did did they float logs down that river yes they did how do you know i remember them doing it back in the summer of ought three or whatever so it's it's a crazy story but the weird part is is that there are fairies like this still around uh on lake charlevoix in michigan there's uh the south and a little town called ironton ironton and ironton is on one side of one of the arms of the lake they call it and so if you want to get around the other side of the lake you can drive around but it's a long long haul through east jordan and so on beautiful drive but if you want to cut it short there's a ferry and you just line up on one side and the ferry comes over and pull your car on and they take you across you get off and a couple bucks you know five bucks something like that and it saves so much time that even when you stop and wait for the fair to come back it still saves time to get in the fair and go across and that's one of those areas that's actually got a cable that you know drags it back and forth you know drags itself back and forth using the cable and there's actually a really cool restaurant called the landing on one side and i was up there with some friends uh two summers ago and it was interesting cause i remember sitting there uh eating lunch watching the fairy go back and forth and you know it's like a it's like a throwback to an earlier time you know except their cars instead of horses and buggies so there you go but it's a crazy story uh that this business has been there more or less for 230 years and they're going to stop now because they've been told that one side of their business was landing on property they had no right to be on after 230 years so white's ferry ends a 230 year plus run over land dispute suzanne pollock wrote that one the hill was written by joseph choi and rafi said to me thanks a lot questions your comments put them below let's talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching later's law it's a sort of glass half full glass stops existing in time and space kind of deal

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 146,542

Rating: 4.9543791 out of 5

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: Qq1wKqYx2Ow

Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021