As with any identifiable region, the Ozarks’ economy is a partly a product of adjacent economies interacting with internal and external forces. A survey of the metro areas that ring the Ozarks may give us a hint about what to expect for the future. The economic engines within the Ozarks also deserve a look. This long essay will yield the conclusion that 2009 will be a year of Read the rest of this entry
Category Archives: Ozarks
Lawyers cringe when neighbors fight
If you want to see a lawyer cringe, ask how he or she likes property line disputes or fights over trees near property lines.
The case of Lau v. Pugh shows why lawyers (including trial judges and appellate judges) hate such cases. After all the fighting and expense, nobody is happy. Here’s how it often plays out. Read the rest of this entry
It ain’t fraud if you know better
Owning a business is the dream of a lot of people, but buying a business can be a nightmare. To facilitate the process, business brokers attempt to hook up sellers and buyers, and they know that getting a worn-out seller with a naive buyer is a very tricky endeavor that often goes sour before or after the sale.
Everybody knows that nobody wants to sell a gold mine, but they do want to put the best face on what they’ve got to sell and make a plausible story for why the owner wants out. Often the sale is due to the “owner’s health,” which can mean just about anything. Sometimes, the seller or the seller’s agent pooh-poohs the scant income on the tax returns, implying that the business throws off a lot of cash that never gets reported.
Business brokers run the full gamut from extraordinarily knowledgeable and helpful to pure cosmeticians. There is one business brokerage firm that I love to work with because of their expertise and integrity–the Kingsley Group, in Springfield, Missouri. Read the rest of this entry
The greatest E. coli risk at Lake of the Ozarks may not be from the water
Undies are in bunches in Jeff City. Gov. Nixon is embarrassed that his lawyer-laden government has been caught not protecting the public from health risks of E. coli, a family of bacteria whose presence in water is a marker of fecal contamination from human and animal sources. Department of Natural Resources officials, and perhaps the governor, judged that the political risk of stating that the lake water was polluted apparently outweighed the public health risk of water contact, at least until after Memorial Day weekend.
The blame game is in full swing, but nobody is explaining Read the rest of this entry
The Tri-State Mining District continues, producing poultry, not lead and zinc
The Tri-State Mining District, comprising adjacent portions of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, is generally thought to be out of business, other than for its massive legacy of environmental damage, notably the Tar Creek Superfund site, but also involving water and soil contamination in several counties in all three states.
But mining continues with no royalties being paid. The mineral is groundwater, exported not as “pigs” of lead, but as chickens and eggs. A major portion of the groundwater drawn from the Ozark aquifer in several Southwest Missouri counties is used for Read the rest of this entry
Water: the supply is dwindling and we’re polluting what’s left
The availability of clean water in the western Ozarks is becoming acute. The Tri-States Water Coalition and Missouri State University are continuing a public exploration of the supply issues. The New York Times has published the first report of its monumental study of compliance and enforcement of water pollution regulations. Water conservation is a necessary part of the solution, but conservation can do little without changes Read the rest of this entry
More confusion for Missouri boat dock law
Boat docks, like other properties along Missouri’s lakes, are valuable and jealously guarded by those claiming ownership or rights of use.
The law of boat docks is a muddle, perhaps due to the historic lack of clarity as to whether a boat dock is real property (land and the things attached permanently to it) or personal property (anything but real property), which is generally portable.
The Missouri legislature attempted to resolve that issue for the purposes of appraisal and mortgage lending with the enactment of HB 842, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Wood, whose legislative district encompasses Table Rock Lake.
Signed by Gov. Nixon on July 7, 2009 and effective August 28, 2009, this new law defines “boat dock” as “a structure for loading and unloading boats and connecting real property to water, public or private.” In addition, “a boat dock is real property and has riparian rights,” provided: Read the rest of this entry
A warranty deed doesn’t always convey everything
Lawyers are taught in law school that ownership of land carries with it a bundle of rights. A warranty deed conveys “fee simple absolute” title, which is the full bundle of rights. A person who obtains title by a warranty deed gets 100% of the rights associated with the piece of land described in the deed, other than what is excepted by the language of the deed, such as recorded restrictions and easements.
But Missouri courts have recognized a hole in this rule: some rights associated with real estate are personal property, not real property, even though the rights have to do with real estate. The warranty deed does not necessarily convey these rights, even though the warranty deed says that it is conveying all “rights, privileges, interests and appurtenances” that go with the land described.
Unless the special rights are specifically identified in the deed or another document of assignment, a court can require a trial to determine whether the person who signed the deed intended to convey them. Most lawyers don’t know about this quirk, and it can bite their clients real hard. Read the rest of this entry
Water + animosity = punitive damages
Bad fences make bad neighbors, especially if the neighbors start retaliating. Then it escalates. They lawyer-up and make things even worse.
Greg and Lisa lived next to Tim on large tracts in a suburbanizing area southeast of Kansas City. They talked about building a fence on their common boundary, where a ditch looped from Greg’s and Lisa’s property onto Tim’s for 50 feet, then came back to Greg’s and Lisa’s property.
Tim put up “no trespassing” signs after seeing Greg and his son walking along the property line. “Somebody” shot the sign with a shotgun Read the rest of this entry
What does Honduras have to do with the Ozarks?
Ozarkers think of themselves as the real people, the salt of the earth, practical, not putting on airs, skeptical but tolerant, willing to help those in need. Our first impulse in meeting someone new is to figure out whether that person is from around here. My guess is that these characteristics are a universal part of human nature in which the question “friend or foe?” is the first issue at the first encounter.
If our first impulse is to stand our own ground, why should we be interested or concerned about what happens in one of the many countries of Central America, especially one as poor as Honduras, whose military just removed the president and sent him into exile in Costa Rica?
Honduras has been an independent republic for as long as Missouri has been a state (since 1821). Honduras is about the size of Tennessee, with a long northern coastline on the Caribbean and a small Pacific coast on the Gulf of Fonseca in the south. The population of Honduras is just under 8 million (like Missouri, Iowa and Arkansas combined), with a per capita annual income of about $4,400 (compared to around $20,000 in the Ozarks).
I don’t have a good feel for Honduran politics, so I’ll let Max Carranza tell his version (shortened by me) of recent events: Read the rest of this entry
Ozarks Law & Economy 