Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993 TAG: 9309100256
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Even cattle ranchers, who benefit most from the law drafted in an era of rural dominance, are open to change.
"It's a muddy mess," Reggie Reynolds, secretary of the Virginia Cattlemen's Association, said of the law and the conflicts it's causing.
The most extreme example came from Caroline County, where a lawyer with a cattle ranch built a fence around his 650-acre farm and then told his neighbors on subdivided land that they needed to pay half the cost.
In general, Virginia's fence law requires all adjoining landowners to share the costs of building and maintaining fences unless there is an agreement otherwise.
John Adams' neighbors, stuck with bills ranging between $2,100 and $12,500, tried to get the law declared unconstitutional. A circuit court judge sided with them, ruling that the law that dates back to 1631 was only beneficial to one class of citizens, agricultural landowners. But the Virginia Supreme Court, in March 1991, upheld the law.
"While some may say that the legislation is unwise, improper or inequitable," the court said, "these conclusions are for legislators to reach, not for judges to assert."
Del. Robert D. Orrock, R-Spotsylvania, said his bill to reform the fence law died in the Agriculture Committee during the last General Assembly session. The committee members "were not particularly sympathetic" to changes that would weaken the position of farmers, and the Virginia Farm Bureau opposed the bill, he said.
Virginia Tech professor Leon Geyer and research assistant Michael Taylor have written a report for the Cooperative Extension Service that pokes holes in the law and outlines alternatives.
Reynolds is publishing the report in the association's September newspaper. "Overall, the cattle industry appreciates the law as it is written, but I'm not sure it's totally fair and equitable."
Geyer has spent a decade trying to mend disputes over fence construction in Virginia.
The owner of an apple orchard in Northern Virginia asked whether he had to pay for a fence needed to keep neighbors' kids from picking his fruit. He was particularly concerned when he was spraying pesticides.
A thoroughbred breeder in Virginia's horse country wanted to build an expensive, "fancy" fence between his pastures and those of a dairy farmer who was willing to pay for a functional one and nothing more.
A vacation home owner in Southwest Virginia wanted to know if he could avoid sharing the cost of a cattle guard on an access road he shared with a rancher.
Geyer calls himself "a neutral broker." He's philosophical about the question of whether a fence keeps something in or out and quotes Robert Frost's famous line, "Good fences make good neighbors." The poet was musing whether a wall was needed between an apple orchard and pine trees.
But the bitter dispute in Caroline County persuaded Geyer to get off the fence on the issue.
"This dispute among neighbors typifies conflicts that arise from economically inefficient fence laws," Geyer wrote in the report, titled "Sitting On The Fence With The Supreme Court of Virginia."
As Virginia became more densely populated in urban as well as rural areas, the report said, the General Assembly modified the fence law to give local governments an option: They could vote to revert to the common law rule that gives the livestock owner the responsibility to fence in his animals.
Now, about one-third of Virginia's counties are "fence-in" counties and the remainder remain "fence-out," which gives neighbors the responsibility for preventing the livestock owner's animal from trespassing.
Geyer and Taylor said the law should be changed so that, in cases like the one in Caroline County, the owner of land with livestock must construct the fence and pay for it.
But when adjoining landowners both graze livestock on their property, they said, the law should require them to split the cost of building and maintaining the barrier.
"This ideal fence law," they wrote, "distinguishes between individuals with adjoining land on the basis of the use they are making of their land."
by CNB