By Richard Ruelas | Arizona Republic
Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the year that Tempe Town Lake was created. It was created in 1999.
On one side of the courtroom was a man whose family plopped themselves on a piece of land in Tempe in the 1890s and claims the property as his birthright. On the other side were attorneys for Tempe, which has so far won rulings saying the land belongs to Tempe.
One of the three judges hearing the case in the Arizona Court of Appeals, Randall Howe, got to the heart of the matter during oral arguments Wednesday asking from the bench, “Who the hell owns this property, then?”
That has been a subject of active court disputes for more than a decade.
