This is why they wanted to scare Bundy - Patriot Action Network

This is why they wanted to scare Bundy - Patriot Action Network

This is why they wanted to scare Bundy

Posted by Scott Narter on May 12, 2014 at 8:30am in General, Town Hall

NEV. RANCHER AWARDED MILLIONS IN DECADES OLD PROPERTY RIGHTS DISPUTE:

TONOPAH, Nev.: A decades-long battle between an American ranching family and the United States government over water rights and cattle grazing on federal lands appears to have ended June 6, when a D.C.-based federal judge ruled in favor of the family and awarded more than $4.2 million in compensation – plus 17 years of interest and attorney’s fees and costs -- to the estates of the late Nevada rancher and property rights advocate Wayne Hage and his first wife, Jean Nichols Hage.

The total is expected to be about $12.4 million.

Describing the conflict as a “drama worthy of a tragic opera with heroic characters,” U.S. Court of Federal Claims Senior JudgeLoren A. Smith, in an 18-page Opinion, ruled the Hages owned the water rights, ditch rights-of-way, and range improvements on the federal grazing allotments for Pine Creek Ranch in central Nevada, they purchased in 1978 – and that by its actions theU.S. Forest Service had indeed “taken” the couple’s constitutionally protected private property rights and they deserved compensation.

“The notion of private property is fundamental to the existence of our Nation,” Smith stated. “It is a fundamental duty to protect, rather than destroy, personal property. … The Founders of our Nation envisioned personal property as a fundamental right. It is part of the trinity of values underlying in our reverence for ‘life, liberty, and property.’”

Furthermore, he wrote: “When a taking has occurred, a plaintiff is entitled to just compensation. The fundamental principle of just compensation is reimbursement to the owner, so that he is put in as good a position pecuniarily as if his property had not been taken.”

“The court finds the government’s actions had a severe economic impact on plaintiffs and the governments’ actions rose to the level of a taking,” Smith said.

The decision is being hailed by property rights advocates as a precedent-setting victory.

“The court made clear that the government has the right to authorize grazing, but does not have the right to prevent the plaintiff from accessing their water rights on federal lands,” said Margaret Hage Byfield – the Hages’ third daughter and executive director of Stewards of the Range, a non-profit organization created in 1992 to support this case and others like it – in a press release.

"This decision is important to every American because it reaffirms our basic right to own property, whether you live in a major US city or rural America," Byfield declared.

Lyman “Ladd” Bedford, one of the attorneys for the Hage family, who was involved in the case from its beginning, commented: “There is now a deterrent to the federal agencies. The federal government has significant exposure by way of having to pay just compensation when they deny ranchers access to their water and range improvements.”

However, the fight may not be over. The government has 30 days from the date of Judge Smith’s ruling to file an appeal, and according to Ed Monnig, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, no decision has been made.

“We’re aware of Friday’s [June 6] court decision and our agency is considering the implications of this ruling and carefully weighing options,” Monnig told the Associated Press.

If the ruling remains unchallenged or is upheld, the case could dramatically impact states’ and federal lands in the West, Hage told the Associated Press in 2004.

It’s the first time in nearly a century that someone has effectively challenged the government over who owns the range rights and water rights out here on these federal lands,” Hage said.

The current opinion -- the latest in a series of four earlier ones, all by Judge Smith – is the culmination of litigation the Hages began in 1991 in response to harassment by the Forest Service and the confiscation of his cattle by gun-toting USFS agents. Hage was cited for “repeatedly trespassing cattle on public lands after being warned to remove them.”

It’s been Hage’s contention that the term “public land” is a misnomer.

“There is no such thing as ‘public’ land,” he explained to Range Magazine in a 2001 interview. “Since at least 1890, it has been established as split-estate federal land. The government retains the mineral rights, but surface property rights to forage and water and access are established in lawfully adjudicated grazing allotments and recorded as state law. It is federal land, but I own the surface property rights.” Source and continue reading here: http://www.newswithviews.com/NWV-News/news50.htm