Advice From Attorney David Bricklin On BPA’s Permission to Enter Request BPA is requesting landowners along the “preferred route” to sign “Permission to Enter Property” (PEP) forms. Here are some things you should know when considering whether to sign. 1. You are not required to sign these forms. You own your property and you do not need to let anyone—including the BPA and its agents—onto your property. 2. If BPA or its agents come onto your property without your permission, they are trespassing. You can call the sheriff and ask that the sheriff come out and arrest the trespassers andor “escort” them from your property. 3. If you refuse to sign the form, BPA will have to go elsewhere or it will need to ask a judge to give it the right to come onto your property. It will be expensive and time-consuming for BPA to ask a judge for permission. If enough people force BPA to ask a judge, BPA may come to recognize it has a bigger problem with this route than it realizes. 4. If BPA goes to a judge, you won’t need to incur any court costs for a lawyer. You can defend your interests in court on your own behalf without a lawyer. You can explain to the judge why you think BPA should go somewhere else. And if the judge lets BPA onto your property, you can ask the judge to order BPA to pay you more than the measly $500 per year BPA is offering now. And you can ask the judge to establish other conditions to protect your interests, like those mentioned in the next paragraphs. 5. Before you force BPA to go to court, you can try to negotiate a better deal for yourself. BPA wants you to think that its offer is a “take it or leave it” offer. You should view BPA’s offer as you would the first offer from any salesman. It’s subject to negotiation. Instead of offering $500 per year, why didn’t BPA offer to pay $10,000 a year? Where is BPA’s study that says the right to come onto your property at any time for a whole year is worth only $500. THERE IS NO SUCH STUDY THAT WE KNOW OF. You can demand $5,000 a year and force BPA to negotiate. 6. You can also negotiate the conditions that apply if you grant BPA permission. You can tell BPA that you want seven days advance notice before each individual entry onto your property. And you want the right to postpone the entry if they propose an inconvenient time. 7. The permission form (PEP) says that BPA will reimburse you if they cause damage while on your property. But the PEP says that BPA gets to decide how to value the damage! YOU should be the one who puts a dollar value on the damage. And the PEP should spell out that the damage includes “all direct, indirect, and consequential damages of any kind, including all lost profits and loss of use, including the expense incurred in establishing the existence and amount of damages.” 8. You should insist that BPA will share with you any and all information it obtains about your property and that it will not charge you to provide you with that information, and that it will be provided to you within 30 days of BPA’s receipt of the information from its contractors or employees. As a side note our board suggests considering contributing the $5,000 a year towards our legal defense fund so that we can continue in our efforts to protect the places you love and call home.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 01:17:50 +0000
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