What is the name of your state? California.
My husband and I own a ranch in the mountains and a house two hours away. There are power lines crossing the property. The power company and phone company have easements across the property. We have a gate at our entrance. It has a chain and padlocks for us, the power company and phone company. The padlocks are hooked together like links of a chain, and each of us can access the property by opening our own padlock, opening the gate, and locking it again. This road has been gated for decades, but the easement holders have their own padlocks on our gate so they can access the easement.
Last week, I wasn’t there, but via my security cameras, I saw that there was a tree trimming crew there, contracted by the power company. About 20 minutes after they drove out of view, a black car came down the drive and when he heard my voice from the camera, he took off deeper into the ranch. I spent two days trying to get answers to who the guy in the black car was. Both this company, and the power company told us that any vehicles of theirs on our ranch would be marked. The black car had no markings.
I called Edison, and I called the tree trimming company to see who the guy in the black car is. Edison looked at my video and told me to call the police. The phone at the tree trimming company went straight to voicemail, and as this happened on Tuesday, they didn’t call me back until Thursday. The sheriff showed up hours after my call, at the same time as a friend of ours. Our friend chatted with the Sheriff at our gate, and saw that the gate was wonky. He thought we had been broken into. He sent a picture of the foot of the left gate, with the gate resting on the ground, which isn’t right. And he didn’t notice that it was upside down or that the two gates no longer meet in the middle.
The next day a truck from Edison showed up, and I spoke to the driver. He said that our gate was open when he arrived. The tree trimming crew was at the far end of the property from the gate. They would have no way of seeing or hearing if someone entered our property, so When I finally heard from the tree trimming crew’s management, I had a discussion with them about that, because they were exposing us to theft, vandalism and liability by leaving our gate open.
Finally, the tree trimming company had someone call me and tell me that it was one of the tree trimming crew that arrived at their facility too late to ride the van up to our property. So he brought his own car.
On Friday evening, we arrived at our ranch, and our gate was hanging at a crazy angle. It has left and right gates that meet in the middle and are locked there. Friday evening, the two gates didn’t meet in the middle. The left side was hanging at least a foot higher than the right, and it looked very strange. It is a pipe gate, custom made, and there is a smaller piece of pipe in one side that slides into the pipe on the other and when the two gates are joined like this, it is rigid all the way across. Unfortunately, the two larger pipes no longer meet in the middle as there is at least afoot of difference in the height of the right and left sides. My husband looked at it for a while and realized that the left gate is upside down!
It is starting to make sense. If the guy in the black car was late, he may have arrived and found that the crew was inside and the gate locked. He may have thought that he could remove a nut and bolt from the left side and slide the chain out. But that nut and bolt holds a support bar to the main heavy steel pipe of the gate. Without that support bar, the gate would have fallen apart. And crashed to the ground. So he jerry rigged it as best he could, and drove on and left it like that.
My husband and I are older, and falling apart, like our gate now is. We have both had rotator cuff surgery in the past year, and could injure ourselves by trying to lift that dead weight. And spending hours trying to figure it out and fix it, and then trying to get the two sides to align like they should. We can’t lift the gate to fix it, and to put it back together will take strong arms, backs and replacement of broken parts that were fabricated by the guy (now dead) who built it, and someone with a mechanical mind to be able to figure out how this gate was made. So I am looking at new gates. And they are expensive. We hadn’t budgeted replacing the gate, which was perfectly functional last week. This didn’t happen because of wear and tear. Someone did this, and we have no control over who the utility gives keys to their padlocks to.
Should we replace the gate and sue the contractor? Small claims court limits should be sufficient to buy a new gate and have it installed.
My husband and I own a ranch in the mountains and a house two hours away. There are power lines crossing the property. The power company and phone company have easements across the property. We have a gate at our entrance. It has a chain and padlocks for us, the power company and phone company. The padlocks are hooked together like links of a chain, and each of us can access the property by opening our own padlock, opening the gate, and locking it again. This road has been gated for decades, but the easement holders have their own padlocks on our gate so they can access the easement.
Last week, I wasn’t there, but via my security cameras, I saw that there was a tree trimming crew there, contracted by the power company. About 20 minutes after they drove out of view, a black car came down the drive and when he heard my voice from the camera, he took off deeper into the ranch. I spent two days trying to get answers to who the guy in the black car was. Both this company, and the power company told us that any vehicles of theirs on our ranch would be marked. The black car had no markings.
I called Edison, and I called the tree trimming company to see who the guy in the black car is. Edison looked at my video and told me to call the police. The phone at the tree trimming company went straight to voicemail, and as this happened on Tuesday, they didn’t call me back until Thursday. The sheriff showed up hours after my call, at the same time as a friend of ours. Our friend chatted with the Sheriff at our gate, and saw that the gate was wonky. He thought we had been broken into. He sent a picture of the foot of the left gate, with the gate resting on the ground, which isn’t right. And he didn’t notice that it was upside down or that the two gates no longer meet in the middle.
The next day a truck from Edison showed up, and I spoke to the driver. He said that our gate was open when he arrived. The tree trimming crew was at the far end of the property from the gate. They would have no way of seeing or hearing if someone entered our property, so When I finally heard from the tree trimming crew’s management, I had a discussion with them about that, because they were exposing us to theft, vandalism and liability by leaving our gate open.
Finally, the tree trimming company had someone call me and tell me that it was one of the tree trimming crew that arrived at their facility too late to ride the van up to our property. So he brought his own car.
On Friday evening, we arrived at our ranch, and our gate was hanging at a crazy angle. It has left and right gates that meet in the middle and are locked there. Friday evening, the two gates didn’t meet in the middle. The left side was hanging at least a foot higher than the right, and it looked very strange. It is a pipe gate, custom made, and there is a smaller piece of pipe in one side that slides into the pipe on the other and when the two gates are joined like this, it is rigid all the way across. Unfortunately, the two larger pipes no longer meet in the middle as there is at least afoot of difference in the height of the right and left sides. My husband looked at it for a while and realized that the left gate is upside down!
It is starting to make sense. If the guy in the black car was late, he may have arrived and found that the crew was inside and the gate locked. He may have thought that he could remove a nut and bolt from the left side and slide the chain out. But that nut and bolt holds a support bar to the main heavy steel pipe of the gate. Without that support bar, the gate would have fallen apart. And crashed to the ground. So he jerry rigged it as best he could, and drove on and left it like that.
My husband and I are older, and falling apart, like our gate now is. We have both had rotator cuff surgery in the past year, and could injure ourselves by trying to lift that dead weight. And spending hours trying to figure it out and fix it, and then trying to get the two sides to align like they should. We can’t lift the gate to fix it, and to put it back together will take strong arms, backs and replacement of broken parts that were fabricated by the guy (now dead) who built it, and someone with a mechanical mind to be able to figure out how this gate was made. So I am looking at new gates. And they are expensive. We hadn’t budgeted replacing the gate, which was perfectly functional last week. This didn’t happen because of wear and tear. Someone did this, and we have no control over who the utility gives keys to their padlocks to.
Should we replace the gate and sue the contractor? Small claims court limits should be sufficient to buy a new gate and have it installed.
