Landowner under the guise of cleaning his fence line takes his bulldozer along a county road and plows a 100 foot long 6 inch gouge between his fence line and the road. The road, which is gravel was about 15 feet wide (not really sure). After the dozer it appears to be a few inches narrower with a 6 inch straight drop from the gravel! A side note is this guy recently lost a "county road map" hearing where he claimed the road was a private drive and has on several occasions blocked county maintainers from grading (the last time he did that I had him arrested, so that has stopped). Anyone ever have a situation like this?

[This message was edited by GM on 11-06-07 at .]

Why not file on him for criminal mischief?

Hi Ken, I took the "old grey one" out there to look at it and that is what will probably happen. I just wanted to see if anyone had ever filed a civil action on a similar deal. Thanks.

To the extent the landowner narrowed the road without authorization, or in any other way cause the road to sustain damage, you might take a look at section 251.160 of the Transportation Code. If you can show negligent operation of a vehicle "or other object," that caused damage to be sustained to the road, your landowner could be held liable for the damage in a suit brought by the county judge and litigated by the county attorney, with the money going to the benefit of the damaged road. I suppose you could argue that, taking the landowner's explanation of cleaning his fenceline at face value, his damage to the road would have been negligent.

I would like to take this moment to nominate Scott Brumley as Chairman of the "Committee on Obscure Problems". Thanks for your input.

As one asked to answer tons of obscure problems, I'll second that nomination!

I'd nominate Lisa Peterson as co-chair, though, for all the obscure road laws she knows!

[This message was edited by Etta Warman on 11-26-07 at .]