{"id":3547,"date":"2014-10-08T08:12:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T12:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/?p=3547"},"modified":"2014-10-08T08:12:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T12:12:00","slug":"breaking-lapeer-prosecutors-roll-over-for-rover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/2014\/10\/08\/breaking-lapeer-prosecutors-roll-over-for-rover\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking: Lapeer Prosecutors Roll Over for Rover"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few years, we’ve grown accustomed to Michigan public\u00a0officials’ willingness to allow pipeline companies to have their way<\/a> with Michigan citizens. We can’t for the life of us understand why so many of our politicians and regulators\u00a0seem so much more interested in protecting\u00a0out-of-state corporations<\/a> rather than the citizens they have been elected (or appointed) to serve. But we fear that the pattern is continuing with ET Rover. Have ANY officials other than township supervisors stepped up to support and assist the landowners in their districts?<\/p>\n

The latest instance of this failure of leadership in Michigan comes from Lapeer County Prosecutor Tim Turkelson who has apparently decided to weigh in on the thorny survey question<\/a> that has been the source of controversy over the past couple of weeks. According to the Lapeer County Press<\/a> (see the image at right), Turkelson this week issued a memo to county law enforcement supporting ET Rover’s right to survey without landowner permission.\u00a0Why? Well, Turkelson apparently assigned his assistant prosecutor Mike Hodges the task of looking into the matter and Hodges went and generated what we believe is a serious misreading of the law, which Turkelson appears to accept.<\/p>\n

\"Prosecutor_issues_memo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Interestingly, Hodges did not turn to the UCPA<\/a> that ET Rover has cited in its letters to landowners<\/a>. Rather, Hodges cited a different Michigan statute,<\/a> one that may or may not be applicable to the matter at hand; we’re not sure. We’re also not sure whether ET Rover has altered its legal strategy or whether Hodges and Turkelson have taken it upon themselves to apply a different statute to the matter. We’re still investigating these\u00a0questions with the help\u00a0of our crack team of brilliant legal minds. Stay tuned for our full analysis.<\/p>\n

In the meantime,\u00a0here is one example of how Hodges is mistaken that we’re pretty confident about: At one point, Turkelson’s\u00a0memo warns property owners about disturbing the survey stakes that ET Rover is sure to place on their properties: “Property owners need to be aware that removing survey markers is a 180 day misdemeanor,” the memo says. This is a very serious warning; Hodges is telling landowners that\u00a0they can be arrested (and possibly jailed!) for removing the survey markers ET Rover places on their property.<\/p>\n

However, this appears to be a very basic misreading of the law– either that or a fundamental\u00a0misunderstanding of what the ET Rover survey crews will do. We\u00a0don’t know\u00a0which.<\/p>\n

Here is the part of the law Hodges refers to, section 54:210(d)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

(1) A person who defaces, destroys, alters, or removes a corner monument or reference monument is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not more than $1,000.00, or imprisonment for not more than 180 days, or both, and shall be responsible for the costs of reestablishment and replacement of the monument and filing of the corner record by a surveyor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, section 54.202 <\/a>very clearly defines the terms “corner,” “monument” and “reference monument.” Here’s what the statute says:<\/p>\n

(d) \u201cCorner\u201d, unless otherwise qualified, means a property corner, a property controlling corner, a public land survey corner, or any combination of these.<\/p>\n

(f) \u201cMonument\u201d means a marker that occupies the position of a corner and that possesses or is made to possess a magnetic field.<\/p>\n

(g) \u201cReference monument\u201d means a special monument that does not occupy the same geographical position as the corner itself but whose spatial relationship to the corner is recorded and that serves to witness the corner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, corner monuments and reference monuments are stakes or other markers that are meant to establish the boundaries lines of a property. But that’s not what ET Rover’s survey crews are seeking to establish.<\/em> Frankly, they don’t care much where one property ends and another begins (although they’ll need to know that). At this point, they just need to know where they can put their pipe– and that’s what their survey crews will mark. They will\u00a0establish what the boundaries of their easements \u00a0and temporary workspaces might\u00a0be as well as\u00a0where the pipeline might be placed. They need to know what kinds of things they might need to go around or under and so forth. So the stakes they put in the ground– the “monuments” are unlikely to be at corners. They’re going to be in all sorts of other places.<\/p>\n

Obviously, we are not encouraging people to mess with survey stakes. Rather, our point here is simply that the law that Hodges and Turkelson are citing is completely inapplicable to the case at hand. Which just goes to show that they really don’t understand the situation. As a result,\u00a0their hasty attempt to inform themselves and render some sort of guidance to law enforcement is inaccurate at best– and inaccurate in ways that could negatively affect landowners, not ET Rover.<\/p>\n

Three\u00a0quick conclusions about this:<\/p>\n

First, if Turkelson and Hodges get something as basic as this matter of “reference monuments” wrong, there is plenty of reason to doubt their other claims about the law.<\/p>\n

Secondly, this is a terribly\u00a0unfortunate situation. If citizens can’t get any helpful clarity about the law from the public guardians of the law, where in the world are they supposed to turn?<\/p>\n

Thirdly, one can’t help but wonder what motivates such sloppy legal research on the part of these public officials, It appears– and we would like to believe that this is not the truth– that their legal conclusions\u00a0are based upon a predisposition to do what is in the best interests of a big corporation like ET Rover rather than the interests of the residents of their very own county.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Stay tuned for more as this story develops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past few years, we’ve grown accustomed to Michigan public\u00a0officials’ willingness to allow pipeline companies to have their way with Michigan citizens. We can’t for the life of us understand why so many of our politicians and regulators\u00a0seem so much more interested in protecting\u00a0out-of-state corporations rather than the citizens they have been elected (or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-6b","category-et-rover","category-legal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3555,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions\/3555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}