Prescriptive Easement

Editor,

Ever hear of a thing called a Prescriptive Easement. If not, you seem to be in the majority. This is an outdated, antiquated, 150 year old law that has managed to hang on and plague landowners by taking away their rights and giving them to trespassers.

What the law does is grant an easement across your property to someone who has managed to drive across it for an arbitrary time period of ten years. Once it is established, there are no safeguards for the deeded owner to go to court and regain control of the property, it is forever. The trespasser now has the say over that property, all the owner retains is the deed and paying the taxes.

This law is like a snake in the grass as few people ever hear of it until it is used against them. After which the natural thing to do is seek legal council, but they can’t help, as you the owner, have no rights in this law. All you do is pour money down a black hole in a futile attempt to get back what you should have never lost.

Most seek help in the legal system, but the remedy is in the legislative system. This outdated antique needs revised or abolished. It is like a law requiring water troughs and hitching posts be maintained on Main Street. But legislators refuse to consider common sense changes and instead predict a catastrophe scenario if the law were changed in any way.

I don’t see how giving land owners a way to protect what’s theirs would end time. All this law does is create anger and resentment in a neighborhood. It makes enemies of people for no reason. If an access is needed it will stand in court, but at least both sides can plea their case. No one is just declared winner because of a time period.

I intend to keep seeking justice in my case and urge anyone who has had this happen to them, to contact their representatives and demand relief through common sense changes to this law.

James Haggerty

Keyser

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Gun massacres

Editor,

Programming is at fault in gun massacres. I take issue with all of those who tend to blame the device instead of the actions when tragedy occurs. A mad gun did not kill the students at Sandy Hook elementary School, a mentally challenged young man did. I have witnessed hundreds of DUI’s in our state. The vehicle did not start itself and result in an accident. It was again the operator not the device.

Our culture has banned discipline in the homes, discipline in the schools, taken prayers from schools, removed the bible from being read in schools, removed the Ten Commandments, and ridiculed the first amendments rights of those who are Christians. With their removal, we replaced a new age of thinking, without allowing God to be at the forefront of our culture. Is it any wonder that our children are void of God.

Parents allow the violent video games, movies, and other forms of entertainment to be the baby sitter. Thus producing a generation void of a consciousness of what is good and bad. Many are to blame for this massacre, but all in all the system to which we have been forced to live, is the most responsible for the loss of life and violence in America.

Let’s not wait until a Sandy Hook Massacre hits our schools again; lets pray and seek God on these issues and allow true discipline and training to be brought back to the schools of America. Will you write your legislator and ask them to restore God back it into the homes and schools of America? It is rather odd, that we ban God from all evens in a school, but when tragedy occurs, even those who banned God ask us to pray.

I love our country and our people. We cannot ban guns and increase gun control to stop a snowball of violence that we have allowed to occur over the past 50 years. Let’s help the mentally ill and stop the blame game like they are doing in DC.

Sincerely, Ron Payne

Hedgesville

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Looking for soldier

Editor,

My name is Charles Smith. I’m trying to locate a soldier from Logan or a surrounding area. All I remember is that I was given the name of Logan Berry, W.Va., but this could be wrong. We served in the US Army in 1961 (basic training) in Ft, Knox, Ky.

Person in question is Pvt. Robert D. Stover, Basic Training, Fort, Knox, Ky. 1961.

I was living in Chicago during that time and have since relocated to Myrtle Beach, S.C.

I can be reached at 843-421-9850. Email gert791@yahoo.com.

Thanks,

Charles Smith

Conway, S.C.