In 2005, Annie George bought land near tiny Tyrone adjoining the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico. To secure her horse, she fenced her acreage with a gate on the road that crossed her property and accessed the national forest.
In response, her neighbor, the U.S. Forest Service, demanded the public have “unfettered” access, tore down the fence, and loosed her horse. She rebuilt the fence, but the agency again removed it, which then occurred a third time.
Matters soon became acrimonious in oral and written communications between George and agency employees. She posted no trespassing signs; the agency sent investigators, took photographs, and collected “evidence.” In 2009, she sued the federal government, its departments, agencies, and bureaucrats.
That she could sue the United States was a right of recent vintage.
The federal government owns a third of the country, and its borders with private landowners run well more than the distance to the moon. Yet for nearly 200 years, citizens and their attorneys had to invent novel legal theories to reclaim land from the United States, without whose permission no lawsuits are allowed. None worked, so Congress, with sole constitutional authority over federal lands, remedied the injustice with the Quiet Title Act (QTA) in 1972.
Congress provided that the QTA was triggered when property owners “knew or should have known of the claim of the United States” to an adverse interest in their property, after which they had 12 years to sue to quiet title.
Congress viewed the deadline as a waivable affirmative defense that the United States could assert. Over
