One rancher’s stand: The devastating impact of government overreach on health, property, and hope
There are countless stories of governments tramping on individual rights, causing extreme financial burdens along with mental and emotional stress. For PLF client Tom Hamann, the violation of his property rights and the subsequent economic losses and stress were accompanied by physical injuries that have forever altered his life. On top of fighting for his health, Tom is fighting for his right to just compensation for the thousands of dollars of damage the government caused on his property. After a drawn-out and disappointing legal battle, Tom and his wife Ayda are now asking the Wyoming Supreme Court to allow his claim for compensation to proceed.
Ranching in their blood
No matter where their careers took them, Tom and Ayda Hamann always knew that ranching would play a role in their lives. Ranching courses through their veins. Ayda’s father was a farmer and much of her youth was spent helping him with his work and learning how to irrigate. One of ten kids, Ayda hated cooking and housework, and helping her father with farmwork offered her a pleasant escape from household chores. Tom’s mother was a registered nurse and his father a master mechanic. They moved around a lot, but farming was a constant in his life. He was just a third-grader when he got his first job working on a farm. For 50 cents an hour, he drove a tractor, moving around bales of hay. Operating heavy farm machinery is daunting for most adults, but for farming families, driving a tractor at a young age is part of life, a tradition that continued when the Hamanns had their own sons. Tom’s family background in the farming and healthcare industries set his future career path, as he later became a physical therapist. “I loved both avenues. I could socialize at work and then go work on the land and get away from all the stress of the doctors and all the other drama by being with the horses and cows.” In 1998, the couple bought their land and started their own ranch. But neither Tom nor Ayda has been content to wear only one hat. In addition to their ranch, Tom started a private practice providing physical therapy for three or four orthopedic surgeons. By the time he started working on the ranch in the evenings, he had already had a full day at work. “I’d get up at 4:30, be to work about 5:30 and start patients at 6:30, 7:00. And then I would work until 5 o’clock, and sometimes it would go until 6 o’clock. And then I would get done at about 6:30 or 08 o’clock and my oldest son would bring me a sandwich.” Ayda also worked in healthcare: She was an ER nurse until a latex allergy forced her to leave the job. She then started her own healthcare company, taking care of developmentally disabled clients, which she still does today. On top of it all, they invested in rental properties, sometimes working until midnight each night renovating their properties. With such a packed schedule, it’s a wonder the pair ever had time to sleep. On their ranch, they breed Red Angus cattle, and they occasionally butcher and sell the meat to their friends around town. They love their land and especially its gorgeous view of Heart Mountain, which made it all the more devastating when the government tore it apart.
A government rampage
In 2016, the couple caught wind of the Heart Mountain Irrigation District’s plan to build a road through their property. The couple was not involved in any deliberations on the matter and began corresponding with the District’s Board to voice their concerns over the taking of their private land. The District asserted its authority to construct the road because of a government easement on the Hamanns’ land. This confused the Hamanns because they had never heard anything about the easement. The District explained that it was, rather conveniently, an “unrecorded” easement—but still valid and recognized. The Hamanns were aware of a separate existing easement on their land that was used as a road on one side of a canal. But in the nearly two decades they owned their land, there had never been any mention of a second easement on the other side of the canal. The Hamanns vehemently disagreed with the government’s assessment. There was also no logical reason that this new road needed to exist—as the existing road allowed for all the necessary maintenance and operation of the canal. Plus, the land in question was fenced and housed their pasteurized livestock, in addition to a long, log archway. Disrupting this area would be a huge inconvenience for their ranch. The matter remained unresolved as the correspondence continued back and forth, with both parties acknowledging that no decision had been reached and thus, no action could yet be taken. An unrelated matter arose, resulting in the district needing access to the Hamanns’ property to move a concrete bowl to allow their neighbors the access they needed to fully irrigate their land. The Hamanns gave their consent, and the scope of the District’s visit was limited strictly to achieving these ends and nothing more. The District’s manager, Randy Watts, arrived on the property with some employees and several pieces of heavy equipment to remove the bowl. He and his team were supposed to leave immediately after, but Watts had other plans. Using excavators, he and his team began tearing up the fencing on the alleged “unrecorded” easement—the one that was not supposed to be touched. An argument ensued after Tom told Watts he did not have the authority to enter or damage that land. As Tom called the sheriff, Watts, who earlier had proclaimed that he had “more power than the sheriff,” would not listen and continued on his rampage of destruction. Tom’s neighbor was brought in, and the two were begging Watts to stop while calling attorneys to let them know what was happening. This is when the dispute turned physical. As Watts continued, Tom ran to stop him from doing more damage. “I told him, I said, ‘Shut it down. The attorneys are coming, the sheriff is coming. We’re going to get this settled down and nobody will get hurt.’” As Tom pleaded and ran toward his fence to guard against any further destruction, Watts got closer in his mini-excavator until the pair were only about 8 feet apart. Tom was stepping over one side of the fence to guard it when he saw an excavator bucket coming toward him out of the corner of his eye. Seconds later, he was struck in the head. It only took a few seconds for his life to be forever changed. Tom sustained serious, lifelong physical injuries and brain trauma that doctors told him would only get worse over time.
Destruction without compensation
As if Tom’s injuries weren’t enough, because of Watts, the Hamanns’ land had sustained nearly $10,000in damages. The Hamanns sued for inverse condemnation against the District and Mr. Watts, along with federal claims against both parties for violating the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Unwilling to compensate the Hamanns for the property damage, the District asked the court for a summary judgment, arguing that because the complaint did not allege that Watts was acting under the District’s expressed orders, and because there were no Board minutes that proved that any such permission had ever been given to Watts, the District was not accountable for any of the damage. Likewise, Watts, who was fired after the incident, pushed for a summary judgment, claiming that the Board had, in fact, given him permission to tear up the Hamanns’ fences. Watts further asserted that as an individual, he lacks the power of eminent domain and as such, cannot be held liable in inverse condemnation claims. The courts failed Tom and Ayda. Taking the District at its word, they determined that “inverse condemnation comes through government action,” and that “there must have been some action by the District that led to inverse condemnation.” Without any public record that any such orders were given, no government action could take place; therefore, the District was not liable for the damages. The fact remains that Watts was a government employee and when public employees execute their duties, they act as representatives of the state agency that employs them. Thus the District should be held accountable for any damages that come as a result of its employee’s actions. The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause says that the government is not allowed to take or damage your property at their whim without having to compensate for the losses. Not only did the district act unconstitutionally, but a man’s life has been jeopardized because of a bureaucratic power trip.
A family forever changed
In addition to the permanent injuries in both his shoulders, cervical neck, the concussion, and the brain trauma, the accident has also caused Tom to lose sight in his left eye—the side where he was struck. The hell his family has had to endure is unimaginable. “You don’t understand, unless you’ve had a head injury, how far-reaching this is,” Tom says. He has had to navigate some of the deepest, darkest moments of despair since sustaining his injuries, from which there is no reprieve. “They don’t understand. And a head injury is like having cancer, but you never die. So, I’m losing my sight because of them. I need total shoulders. Then they medicate you, and it just takes your life.” Tom had dreams for the future that will never be realized now. “I wanted to retire, have a little land, and Ayda and I would be a traveling nurse, a traveling physical therapist, and we could go to Hawaii for the winter and take care of people like in the nursing home as casual relief. We could go to Arizona. All of that is gone.” His youngest son has also had to bear some of the burden: He was on track to go to college but was set back after his father’s accident. Tom laments:
All the money in the world would not fix my health. I’m going to be gone before my time. I may wake up and because of my deterioration of the scar tissue in my brain I may not even recognize my son, or who I’m laying next to in bed, my wife. People just don’t understand what they’re doing. It’s the biggest overreach you can imagine.
While Tom’s health remains a major source of worry, he finds some comfort and hope through his continued legal fight. “The only victory I can get is knowing that hopefully, these bullies don’t do it to the smaller people and it never happens again,” he says. After the incident, Tom was in a local convenience store when a sweet, older lady approached him. As Tom describes the encounter:
‘You’re Tom, Tom Hamann, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And she says, ‘You’re going to sue them, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Well, I think things are in the works.’ She says, ‘You better, you better.’
Tom and Ayda aren’t just fighting for themselves; they are fighting for that sweet woman and all the other small farmers who don’t have farms as big as theirs or other steams of income that would give them the resources to fight back. Finding a silver lining in Tom’s situation would be a struggle, to say the least. But Tom is one in a million. “Maybe God put this in front of me so that we can get something changed so that this little lady, in my mind, she won’t lose everything.” Pacific Legal Foundation has the privilege of helping Tom hold the government accountable for its action and ensure that no one else has to find themselves in a similar situation. We hope the Wyoming Supreme Court holds the irrigation district accountable for its unconstitutional actions.
