Who Owns the Water View?

Today, we are again wondering who owns a view. But now instead of tree cutting in Nantucket, the dispute involves arboricide in Rockport, Maine.

As always though, it is about property rights.

Owning the View

After the Antonson family from Brooklyn, NY purchased a summer home in Maine, they asked their neighbor, Mrs. Graham, for a favor. Because the tall trees on her property blocked their water view, they asked her to cut them down. Known as a gracious lady, she had let them use her wooden pier for their boats and swimming. But the trees were creatures that she refused to kill. Subsequently, when they offered to buy a slice of her land, she again said “No.”

The next year (2021), after several of Mrs. Graham’s trees started dying, investigators discovered herbicidal poison. Or, as the town’s report on the matter explained, the poison was “limited to a distinct corridor of trees directly in line with the deck of the Antonson residence…” As a result, Antonson was fined $3,000. Denying guilt, he paid.

Dotted across the U.S., between Maine and San Francisco, there have been thousands of people with a similar conflict. They include cases in Nantucket and Kittery, Maine, in Matha’s Vineyard and Southbury, Connecticut, and in Issaquah, Wash.

Supporting all without a view, English common law includes an “ancient lights” doctrine. While it says that a property owner could prevent a neighbor from erecting a structure that blocked the sunlight they had been enjoying, ancient lights has been unsuccessfully cited in U.S. courts.

Our Bottom Line: Conflicting Property Rights

At the end of the American Revolution, a bondholder dispute erupted.

Knowing their value would soon soar, speculators purchased war bonds from individuals that needed the cash. When the bonds matured, sympathy for the original owners surfaced from advocates that said they had helped the war effort while speculators did nothing but take advantage of people. Supporting property rights, Alexander Hamilton said that legally sold bonds belonged to their new owners. In a market economy, we need the guarantee that whatever we buy belongs to us.

Municipalities that fine people for cutting down or poisoning a neighbor’s trees are preserving property rights. Implicitly they are telling us that those property rights include the view.

My sources and more: Thanks to the NY Times for inspiring today’s return to the water view and for our featured image.