David Cooper, 26, is an example of how dangerous a little legal knowledge can be. The Texas man was arrested after squatting in a $405,000 Arlington home after the family left for Houston so that the mother could receive cancer treatment. Cooper said that he read about adverse possession in the law library at Southern Methodist University. He drew up an affidavit stating that he was asserting ownership by adverse possession and that was enough during an initial visit by the police. When the family arrived, however, the police finally put an end to the claim and criminally charged him with felony theft and burglary. His wife, Jasmine Williams Cooper, was charged with burglary. A jury convicted Cooper but acquitted his wife (after Cooper insisted that she did not stay at the house with him).
Cooper says that he came across the property while working on lawn care in the area.
Cooper trimmed the trees and cleaned up the property around what he claimed was an abandoned house. The actual owner, Raymond Dell, said that they were simply in Houston for the medical treatments of his wife. Dell then discovered his furniture was missing and his family’s clothes were stuffed in garbage bags.
Cooper insisted in court that “I wasn’t trying to take no one’s house. I was just trying to take the property under adverse possession.” Texas law allows people to claim abandoned property if they maintain it and pay taxes on it.
Notably, prosecutors have instructed the clerk to stop accepting adverse possession affidavits as “fraudulent” after dozens of such claims arose.
Texas Civil Practices & Remedies Code Sec.16.021 defines adverse possession as “an actual and visible appropriation of real property, commenced and continued under a claim of right that is inconsistent with and is hostile to the claim of another person.” This requires actual possession of the property, continuously possession, and the assertion of a claim of right that excludes all others.
Sec. 16.025 states:
(a) A person [i.e., the original owner] must bring suit not later than five years after the day the cause of action accrues to recover real property held in peaceable and adverse possession by another who:
(1) cultivates, uses, or enjoys the property;
(2) pays applicable taxes on the property; and
(3) claims the property under a duly registered deed.(b) This section does not apply to a claim based on a forged deed or a deed executed under a forged power of attorney.
The assumption by people like Cooper is that during that period you are simply fulfilling your statutory obligations of adversity. Police view it as burglary.
Source: Star Telegram
Source: ABA Journal
Waldo: “You simply need to open your mind to the possibility that some people do stupid things because they embrace crazy legal theories.”
As a psychologist, I do have an open mind to more than a few of the stupid things people do because they embrace crazy theories and beliefs of all kinds, not just of the law. I was puzzling over whether there was something else about the property that even remotely suggested that it had been abandoned or was no longer being inhabited, besides the owners being away for awhile, which allowed Cooper to idiotically apply his [lack of] “understanding” of the law of adverse possession. I’m curious if his “belief” conveniently applied only to this expensive house or would as easily apply to an inexpensive apartment. I suspect “not.”
Let’s take the helicopter view.
Police don’t study much law and the “take” is little.
Most politicians have studied law, and their take is large.
Now what keeps the practicing lawyer on the “right” side and content?
Makes me want to look up a local situation. As I remember it, a piece of vacant land adjoined A’s property. He maintained it for years and tried to take by adverse possession. The owner objected, not to the years of maintenance but to losing possession. I don’t remember when the paperwork was filed nor the outcome. I think it was a mediated settlement. Wish I’d read more than the first paragraph.
DrSigne, you are not confused, although I believe the family was absent for much longer than a typical vacation. You simply need to open your mind to the possibility that some people do stupid things because they embrace crazy legal theories.
I’m confused. Is there some piece of information missing about the financial situation of the house? As I read this, Cooper felt he could have taken possession of any home by adverse possession if the family were not in residence for any reason such as having gone on vacation.
These types of claims have drawn a lot of attention in Tarrant County over the last year or so. This guy got off with probation and a fine (no jail time). He’s rather lucky considering the amount of attention people doing what he did has received.
Don’t ask me … I don’t know.
Here is a case of adverse possession of a car:
Lawyers and laymen alike misread the law every day. Some of those lawyers are very esteemed judges.
frankly:
“This guy goes right up their with the clowns who claim to understand tax law better than the IRS.”
Have you ever tried to get tax advice from the IRS?
I say give the guy the house. the owner probably is not paying the mortgage, taking advantage, like many middle and upper middle class people I know, of this administration’s foreclosure laws while he buys a new kitchen and bath and take vacations on the tax payers dime. Aided and abetted by wall street weasels who are building multi-million dollar homes in the Hamptons funded by TARP.
I dislike collectivism in all its variants.
A god damn capitalist country would have let those motherfuggin weasels fail. In our collectivist society we let the poor and middle class pay for the party the rich held with the help of government. With the help? Hell, the whole tab was picked up by government.
I agree with Woosty. I doubt that a bakster would be dealt with so easily. Of course, they ahve more resources and would blame it on some subcontractor they aren’t properly supervising. The GOP says people should have more inityiative. Clearly, this guy has it, even if he doesn’t understand context and precedent.
I hear an awful lot of whining about law school & how pointless it is to go 3 years. Yet some schmuck will read one book & think he knows enough about the law that he can outfox the kid who spent 3 years whining about going to law school.
Its not the little knowledge that makes the problem its the huge stupid that does.
This guy goes right up their with the clowns who claim to understand tax law better than the IRS
Woodsy….. Wow… That sounds like the truth….. Or fanatical democrats….
sick cancerous thieves….you mean like bankers?
This is a good result….. Sick, sick thieves…..more cancerous than the ones that have it….
Of course the owner should have just shot the schmuck based on the Castle Doctrine and shot him coming up the driveway based on stand your ground and shot him passing by in the shopping mall on the squater gets this ground.
He who squats, wants for not.
Let him now take possession of an 8′ x 12′ cell, shared with 3 other inmates.
Hopefully for the accused, he will find better counsel than himself.
People reading something and not actually understanding it.
Imagine that. 🙄