Barney's Entanglements with Various Aspects of Property Law - Essay Example

First his son Opie had used the property as collateral for a loan, and with a payment default the property was being pursued for foreclosure by the lending party. Next Barney finds out that Ernest had been squatting on that property for about two decades, and claimed ownership for that reason. First Barney’s ownership claim on the property is legitimate, under the principle of law called “joint tenancy with right of survivorship”. The case’s citing this principle is valid, and that Barney had legal right to the mountain property as alleged.

The interesting aspect of this principle of law is that when a partner co-owner dies, the law’s operation automatically grants full rights of ownership to the remaining co-owner, with no regard to the power of a will to subvert that operation (Farlex, 2012; James T. Blazek & Associates, 2000). Opie was able to use the land, meanwhile, as collateral on the strength of his stake on this property, from a will by Barney. There is some legal opening for Barney to explore this aspect of joint tenancy law in order to contest the legality of Opie’s use of the land as collateral for the failed loan.

Meanwhile, Barney’s larger problem seems to be that Ernest had usurped the land, and may have legal ground to stake the claim to that land and retain ownership. As the case states, Ernest’s possession of the land is uninterrupted for two decades, is notorious, and for that long period of time uncontested. Under adverse possession law, where usual limitation statutes for contesting ownership is seven or twenty years, Ernest may have a case for claiming legal ownership of the land (Cornell University Law School, 2010).

As a lawyer my advice would be for Barney to weigh how much the property means to him versus how much his relationship with Opie means. He can pursue a case contesting the legality of the use of the land as collateral, but there is the matter of Ernest having probable valid claim to the land that complicates things. Barney here is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one end he is being pursued by the lender who wants to foreclose. On the other Ernest had laid claim to the land. There seems to be no easy way out of this.

The mountain property maybe a lost cause (Cornell University Law School, 2010; Farlex, 2012; James T. Blazek & Associates, 2000). II. The Beach Property The town authorities cited eminent domain as the primary law principle that justified their appropriating Barney’s property for use to develop the beach front into the Nickelodeon facility that Barney thought so little off. Now eminent domain is a power of the state and of the governments, in this case of the county government, to do such appropriating of private property for particular purposes, but it is not clear in the case that the town itself was the acting developer, or whether the town was citing eminent domain in order to profit a private developer who may be the real owner of the resort.

There is the element of eminent domain that the land appropriated must be for the use of the public. In this case, while the resort is supposed to be for the general public, it might be a privately owned enterprise, in which case the use of eminent domain may not be applicable, or valid. There is a case to be made for contesting the right of the town to take away Barney’s beach property, on the basis of the use of eminent domain as the primary excuse is an invalid interpretation of the eminent domain doctrine.

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