In a trial between two neighbors disputing a 3-foot-wide strip of land between their homes, a New York judge looked to poetry and literature:
“Respected more modern writings reflect on the particular problem now presented. ‘Good fences make good neighbors,’ only when they agree on the line between their properties, suggested Robert Frost in Mending Wall (1914). FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS 926 (John Bartlett ed., 1968). Frost also noted: ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.’ Id. And Gilbert Keith Chesterton has reportedly advised: ‘Don’t ever take a fence down until you have the reason why it was put up,’ ascribed to Chesterton by John F. Kennedy in a 1945 notebook. FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS, supra at 919.”
Stickler v. Halevy, 794 FSupp2d 385, 390 (E.D.N.Y. 2011).