Left is right

In our continuing series on how folks whose very existence is defined by their ability to use words to describe things utterly fail at the use of words to describe things, we have this story, described on the Chron frontpage as "Public Land, Private Use."

The story is about some trail that a bunch of people use. Part of the trail goes through private property, and the owners are throwing a fit about the folks using their property for it. Meanwhile, the trailusers are throwing a fit about the dudes who own the property trying to control what it's used for. Read it yourself if you care about the details.

My question is: How does that fit the description "Public Land, Private Use." Wouldn't "Private Land, Public Use" make a whole lot more sense? The phrase "public use" and variants of it appear numerous times in the story itself. I guess it doesn't make the property owners sound as selfish, but is that really the level at which wording decisions are made at the Chron? "Well, let's see, this would be inaccurate, so let's go with it!"

posted by Beetle Aurora Drake 8/19/2006 11:51:00 PM #
Comments (1)

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Comments:

Actually, I think there's a civil code section basically saying that if you let the public walk across your land for 20 or so years, without a special, magic sign, a public easement is created. Its not my area though, so I'd have to research it.

# posted by  Anonymous : 10:36 PM, August 21, 2006

 

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