Private Land

I propose a simple answer to Gail M. Casburn’s statement of an “epidemic of abuse by private landowners” (letter, Feb. 9).

Precisely because they are private landowners, they enjoy no immunity from liability should someone be accidentally injured or killed while walking the trail over private property to visit Owen Brown’s grave site. Have no doubt that a lawsuit would be filed, a jury would find them liable and the damages assessed would be crippling.

If the landowners tried to improve the trail to make it safer, such efforts could never be sufficient to protect them from our increasingly litigious and “not my fault” society.

I consider the landowners’ actions in fencing off their private property to be very responsible. They are protecting themselves, their families and the trespassers who want to cross their private property.

JEFFREY J. MAILLIAN

Newport Beach