This one isn't so much a property or property rights opinion, but more "property adjacent" as they say.
Even so, we're not going to comment much about the Massachusetts Appellate Court's opinion in Lyman v. Lanser, No. 23-P-73 (Mar. 7, 2024), and not just because it seems faintly ridiculous.
The entire court vacated a single justice's order vacating a preliminary injunction entered by the trial court which ordered the parties who were apparently locked in deadly combat about a jointly-owned dog named "Teddy Bear Lanser-Lyman." The trial judge had ordered the parties to share custody of Teddy Bear, as if it were a child or something. Well, you clowns named the dog like a child and probably treat it like a child, so why not fight over it as if it were a child? "Pet parenting" gone too far.
Read the darn thing. Maybe you will laugh, maybe you will cry. There are some tidbits about property law in the opinion.
And then remember there are two fools in Massachusetts who were willing to pay lawyers to do this. And a court willing to write a 20-page published opinion about it.
At least the court isn't being asked to be a super Zoning Board of Appeals.
Lyman v. Lanser, No. 23-P-73 (Mass. App. Ct. Mar. 7, 2024)
