Hill & Gully Enduro Team, Chicago has legal question

hey bb, there could be zoning/noise/nuisance ordinances you'd need to know about; those would be in effect in the town or county. the neighbor could also sue for common-law nuisance. sounds pretty bogus to me, when i've seen livestock while riding, the biggest problem has been to get it to move out of the way.

Nuisance is only one of many ways a neighbor can jam up your event. Zoning can also be used, as CIDRA in D-17 found out a few years ago (they were getting fined for holding races on property zoned for agriculture instead of recreation). If the neighbor has a problem with the race, he/she will make it your problem no matter how many legal issues you're able to overcome. Get past the noise issue and they'll come up with zoning or something else. It's all about the benjamins, man. They want a ransom, plain and simple. Bottom line is, you gotta have everyone's cooperation if you're going to have this kind of event.

Qualifying Statement of Release from Any and All Liability Associated With Writer's Claim to Know Anything About the Law:
I am not an attorney.

BB,
KaTooMer hit the nail on the head. We(Canton M/C) have been through similar legal hassles with neighbors at our old riding grounds. They repeatedly sued us for noise, dust, erosion, degradation of property values, increased traffic on the roads leading to the club grounds, blah, blah, blah...... The bottom lines is that after spending several thousand dollars and actually winning some small battles, our attorney said the neighbors could repeatedly take us to court over minor complaints and that the presiding judge would have to treat the complaints as legitimate until proven otherwise. What happened to innocent until proven guilty??? :think:

If you are outside of the city limits, you will need to check with the County Zoning Office to get up to speed on the ordinances which could ultimately shut ya down. Good Luck...........

barky, i thought about your problem this weekend when i rode in an enduro in texas & we were maybe 20 feet from a bunch of cows at 1 point, who did not even look up.

we have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff in our little piece of the world also. i think that as katoomer said, a feud with the neighbor may not get you where you want to go. perhaps the best way to deal with this is to try to work it out with the guy. for example, our club has a hs track near a neighbor who moved there from the city & wants to think he lives in the wilderness. he wanted to prevent our events. we went & stood on his porch with him while an event was in progress & got him to admit that he couldn't even hear the bikes. finally he admitted that the real problem was that he didn't want more traffic going past his house on a public, paved road. we finally compromised with him such that we have only 2 "public" events there each year, which has worked out fine; he can pretend he lives off the edge of the earth (20 miles from a city with 700,000 or people), & we have all of the organized events there we care to have. we have another venue across the street from a guy who frankly CAN hear the bikes, & we got him calmed down in much the same way. most people will work with you if you treat them with respect in a non-confrontational way, trying to meet them in the middle. this guy may turn out to be the exception, but i think i'd start this way. don't tell the bar association i told you this, but going to court should be the absolute last resort.

BB - Sounds like either Price's or Hanley's. Am I right? Man that really sucks, but with all those "city folk" moving out to the boonies, it's to be expected. Tell everyone in H&G "hello" for me.

BTW - Mrs. Woods want to know when you, Mrs. Buster and the little Buster are coming out for a visit?