Homeowners Fight Over 70-Foot Strip of Land, Generator, and a Dead Cow
Two couples recently found themselves in a massive battle over a 70-foot stretch of timberland. The battle is taking place in Farmerville, Louisiana, a rural part of Union Parish.
According to court documents published on FindLaw, the case is broken up into two parts (No. 56,654-CA and No. 56,655-CA), both of which come with their own points of interest. It all began in September 2023, when Jesse and Ruby Colvin filed a lawsuit against their former friends, Robert Bradford Jones and Roni Michelle Reppond Jones.
It seems like the former friends disagreed on who owned a particular stretch of land, which was divided by a wire fence. Both parties felt that they were the rightful owners. But their fight didn’t only play out in the courts, since the Joneses claimed that Jesse Colvin began a campaign of harassment over the property dispute.
That included putting up construction fencing and harassing signs, and even placing a dead cow near the line. Here’s what we know.
The Joneses and Colvins Were Friends at First
According to legal documents, the pair were quite neighborly before the dispute blew up. But all of that was forgotten when they got into a disagreement about the property boundaries, particularly when it came to an old wire fence that had fallen down between the two properties.
According to the Joneses, the fence served as a physical boundary marker, and each party owned the land on their side of the fence. But the Colvins disagreed and claimed that their property extended beyond the fence line. An initial court ruling about the dispute ruled in favor of the Joneses, saying that the “old downed fence” was a physical representation of the property lines.
The Ruling Came After a Campaign of Harassment
According to the Joneses, the Colvins had been harassing them since the dispute began, starting around April 2023.
A second lawsuit shows that the Joneses accused the Colvins of several things, including setting up harassing signs that were pointed directly at their yard, installing orange construction fencing near the boundary line, shining high-powered lights directly into the Joneses’ property and backyard, running a loud generator from dusk until dawn, and placing a dead cow close to the property line.
A Second Trip to the Courthouse Was Needed
The neighbors headed back to court after the Colvins appealed the ruling.
During that time, the Joneses sought a permanent injunction and financial compensation for the damages they claimed they endured as a result of the harassment. A judge ended up ruling in favor of the Joneses, requiring the Colvins to stop any and all harassment of their neighbors.
Not only that, but they also found Jesse Colvin liable for the harassment and ordered him to pay $7,500 to each of the Joneses, for a total of $15,000.
It’s a shame to see what amounted to almost a decade of friendship dissolve over 70 feet of property, but unfortunately it sounds like that is exactly what happened. Hopefully the old friends have found a way to make amends, or at the very least, found a way to ignore one another so that they can keep from having to go back to the courthouse yet again.
