Neighborly

The small town of my birth has a small private airport. It is primarily used by the crop sprayer.

The farmer that rents the land north of the runway got it into his head that the crop duster was damaging his crop. The crop duster offered to pay for any damage if the farmer would get an assessment from a crop adjuster. This was not acceptable to the farmer. Most likely because there is no crop damage because the crops planted are resistant to the chemicals sprayed.

Instead he built a tall fence section/wall on the rented property to presumably either prevent take offs or insure the plane was 15 foot higher.

It has been a year now and the county board passed an ordinance to force the wall to be removed. The legal battle has been joined.

This being a novel situation to me I wanted to get the legal experts and property rights advocates to give their thoughts. Does the farmer have the right to build a structure to hinder the pilot by endangering his life? Will the county or the farmer prevail in court?

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I don’t know what the prevailing winds are in that area – but couldn’t the crop duster avoid the wall to the north by taking off towards the south? Problem solved! Without any lawyer getting even richer!!

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Is the crop duster actually spraying chemicals on fields other than those whose owners have paid to have them sprayed? If so, it seems to me those farming the fields sprayed without permission have a legitimate claim against the sprayer regardless of whether the spraying is judged to have caused damage by a third party.

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The wind is predominantly from the north

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The crop duster is not spraying chemical on this farmers ground. The farmer believes there is leakage.

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Under A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy, the property rights involved would have been staked, and protected by law, long ago:

But in other areas, such as radio frequency and orbital slots,
the analogy with frontier “land” is almost perfect.

The NAT, unlike George’s land tax, makes it possible for the
government to open up all frontiers to private claim and
development. Claimants must simply define and register the
nature of the property rights that they wish to claim so that
others can avoid overlapping claims or negotiate easements.

Naturally, there are many such abstract property rights which are
now in use by people, although unclaimed. The principle of first
use, like first to invent in patent law, should be the criteria
for priority on a claim. “Use” should include not only direct
physical utilization, but declaration of intent to use the
property right via claim.

NAT liability begins with the date that the claim is protected
under law.

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