Bob Collins
A judge in Grand Rapids, Minn., has ruled that if someone else’s garage sits partially on your property, it’s OK to saw it in half.
The ruling comes in the case against Roger Weber of Nashwauk who sawed Mark Besemann’s garage in half in April 2013. Besemann had purchased the house from Weber’s sister, unaware that a family feud was raging over the location of the garage.
Besemann sued Weber but Judge Lois Lang has ruled that Weber had a legal right to remove the portion of the garage that sat on his property, Forum News Service reports.
The house Besemann purchased had been owned and lived in for years by Roger Weber’s father, Robert Weber. But after the elder Weber died in 2012, and the home passed to the sister, Roger Weber claimed that half of what had been his father’s garage was in fact built on property the younger Weber now owns.
Sometime between April 22 and April 27, 2013, Roger Weber sawed the garage in half and removed the portion he claimed was on his property.
Besemann discovered the damage April 27, just days after closing on the property, and eventually filed a civil suit asking for $20,000 in damages for the ruined garage and another $20,000 in punitive damages from Weber.
Besemann also has to pay Weber’s legal costs.
“I’m obviously being railroaded by a small group of ‘public servants’ with their own agendas,” Besemann tells Forum. “(He) has destroyed my garage and rendered the house unlivable by damaging the septic system. What’s next? He now has an open ticket out there to do what he wants so it’s anybody’s guess. I have no choice but to keep fighting what now appears to be a losing battle.”
The dispute arose during Weber’s campaign as the endorsed Republican for the District 06 seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives. He lost.
(h/t: Ann Arbor Miller)
