Am I getting sued......??

[Evan Bell]

On episode 109 of the BP podcast, Scott Smith said it’s not a matter of if, but when, you will get sued.....well, looks like our time may be here. We’ve owned three units on the same lot since January. All three are occupied, with happy tenants I might add. So who might be suing us you ask? Not a tenant, but quite possibly the guy who owns the lot next to ours. He has a dilapidated billboard advertising his business on our property. The previous owner of our property let him put it there, and it has since fallen into disrepair - paint is all faded and chipped, business name and non-current phone number are barely legible. In the meantime, he has put up a new sign, with current phone number, on his property. We asked him to remove the old sign from our property, and that set him off big time. I didn’t even know some of those curse words existed until my phone call with him this morning. He eventually agreed to remove the sign from our property... Here’s where the potential lawsuit comes in. Apparently, when the duplex that’s on our property was built, in 1986, the leach line was run onto his property. He is now stating that he wants the leach line removed immediately, otherwise he is going to sue us to get it removed and call “code enforcement” (his words) and get our property **** down... I have talked with our property management and they told me to basically wait him out. They told me that if he does decide to sue us, it will be in small claims court and that the judge *should* most likely rule in our favor to leave the leach line where it is since it doesn’t inhibit his use of his property. This is a headache for sure, but I’d much rather have to deal with something like this than have to go back to punching my old time clock again.

[Russell Brazil]

You likely have a prescriptive easement for it since its been am open and notorious use for 30 years. Also he might have the same if his sign was there for 30 years. Check your state laws on how long it takes to create a prescriptive easement.