Couple files suit in gun-range dispute~ Guns noisy

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Apr 15, 2010

The Waterford Fish and Game Association's site on Route 118 includes a clubhouse and firing ranges. A couple is filing suit against the club, claiming that noise from the range is causing a nuisance.
Share .PARIS — A Waterford couple has filed suit against a local fish and game club, charging that the noise from a firearms range is a nuisance.

John and Debbie Howe charged the Waterford Fish and Game Association with nuisance, negligent infliction of emotional distress and loss of consortium. Prior to filing the lawsuit at Oxford County Superior Court, the Howes made several appearances at Waterford Board of Selectmen meetings to raise concerns about the club's shooting range on Route 118.

According to the minutes of the meetings, the Howes said they formed the Waterford Noise Abatement Coalition to raise concerns about noise from the range. Along with other residents, they said that some firing was done in the early-morning hours and they questioned whether the club had expanded without going before a site plan review.

Paul Brook, vice president of Waterford Fish and Game, said the club's facilities have undergone a number of renovations but no expansion. He said the renovations included the construction of a new clubhouse on the larger footprint of the older one and the installation of a berm that cut the size of the rifle range.

Brook said a skeet-shooting range was put in, but it replaced a trap-shooting site and uses smaller guns than the 12-gauge shotguns used in trap shooting.

“Effectively, there has been no expansion,” Brook said. “We just made the place better.”

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Doesn't Maine have a range noise protection law? When crafted properly, they knock this crap down easily.
 
in other news water is wet, grass is green.

these people need to move if they don't like it so much. i highly doubt they didn't notice something that has been there for around 80 years when they bought the place.
 
in other news water is wet, grass is green.

these people need to move if they don't like it so much. i highly doubt they didn't notice something that has been there for around 80 years when they bought the place.

+1

the town should take a vote on how many people want the range to stay or how many people want the compaining party to stay and decide upon that
 
In a related story, I am filing suit against the Massachusetts Department of Transportation because I can hear the Mass Pike from my house. I know it's been there for 50 years and I've been here only three, but I have rights, dammit!!!
 
Were they blind folded and wearing ear plugs when they purchased? I doubt it. Looks like they're about to help send some lawyer's kid to college. I hope the range counters for legal fees.
 
The couple should be countered sued and prosecuted for filing a frivolous lawsuit then run out of town on a rail.
 
+1

the town should take a vote on how many people want the range to stay or how many people want the compaining party to stay and decide upon that
I would say this is a bad idea in principle. Constitution rights cannot be taken away by a vote (or should not be). It might work in practice, in this case, but to put the club's and club members' rights to a vote actually opens the door for those, like the complainants, who feel that inalienable rights are mutable for their convenience.
 
I live on a intersection rt 122 and wake up to trucks Jake breaks every morning, can i sue the town and have them close the road? My guess is that the range was their first so a savvy buyer when looking to purchase a home would have noticed the range and thought "Gee that might get noisy" and not buy the house.

On a side note if anybody knows if they are moving out and selling the house let me know sounds like a good spot to relocate to.
 
negligent infliction of emotional distress and loss of consortium..
Loss of consortium? Are they too upset to have sex or is it they just are trying to wring more money out of the club? Inquiring minds want to know.
 
negligent infliction of emotional distress and loss of consortium..
Loss of consortium? Are they too upset to have sex or is it they just are trying to wring more money out of the club? Inquiring minds want to know.

Yep, Debbie has shut John off.
 
who was there first? Enquiring minds want to know.....

The range was incorporated in 1952 but existed since the 1930's.

The Howes moved there in 1980...

greenacres1.jpg


Howe comes by his expertise from having grown up on a farm, been vice president of engineering in a Fortune 500 company division, then moving with his wife, Debbie, to a 175-acre farm in Maine in 1980, when he was 45 years old, “to investigate self-sufficiency during the peak of the Cold War.” Since then his Howe Engineering Company has made, among other products, bicycle-powered generators for commercial sale. More recently he’s built a 13 hp solar-powered Farmall Cub tractor that works … plows and harrows, doesn’t need gasoline, doesn’t need 2000 pounds of hay and grain each year like a team of horses or oxen, doesn’t pollute the air, loves sunshine, and goes up to 12 miles per hour.

http://www.mofga.org/Publications/M...r/Summer2005/JohnHowe/tabid/1161/Default.aspx

in other news water is wet, grass is green.

these people need to move if they don't like it so much. i highly doubt they didn't notice something that has been there for around 80 years when they bought the place.

I've always had my suspicions that some of these bedwetters move into these properties knowing full well that a range (or some other "nuisance" or eye sore), is within ear shot.

They probably figure they can acquire the property now at a decent price, wait it out a bit, then try to force the neighbors to comply with their wishes when the time is ripe.
 
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In a related story, I am filing suit against the Massachusetts Department of Transportation because I can hear the Mass Pike from my house. I know it's been there for 50 years and I've been here only three, but I have rights, dammit!!!
I should file a loss of consortium lawsuit against MSM. The emotional distress inflected by the noise coming from those guys is devastating... [laugh]
 
After the dust settles maybe we could organize an NES shoot there. With Tannerite. I'll even buy a case. [laugh]

-Mike
 
You'd figure these people would be happy to live within earshot of a firing range. What are the chances some strangers casing the local area to see who they could victimize, after hearing shots fired all the time nearby, would plan to rob a house in the neighborhood?

I wonder if statistics would show that homes within a certain radius of a gun club have a much lower incidence of B&E than those in a similar demographic without one.
 
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