The mother of John Burbank, the Jefferson man arrested for an alleged armed confrontation on May 13 at his Goose Hill Road residence, has filed a lawsuit against the town.

Filed in Lincoln County Superior Court before the confrontation took place, the lawsuit stems from a years-long dispute Victoria Burbank has had with road commissioners and other town officials over property rights. Town officials have deferred comment to Augusta law firm Bernstein Shur on the issue.

John Burbank was taken by Lincoln County Sheriff deputies following a 45-minute standoff last Monday after he confronted a road crew while wearing a handgun in a holster at his side.

He faces a felony offense of criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon for the incident, though he denies threatening anyone. And he faces a civil offense for allegedly creating a police standoff. John Burbank is due to appear in court on June 20, according to court records.

His mother, Victoria, asked him to request remaining dirt from Road Commissioner Alan Johnston and his crew when they were on the property. This first encounter with road workers prompted a call from the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office. John Burback said a deputy told him he was within his rights to carry the firearm, but warned him not to threaten anyone.

The second encounter, when John Burbank asked the road crew about a car parked on the family lawn, prompted another call to the sheriff's office. Lincoln County Sheriff deputies, a Maine Drug Enforcement Agency officer and officers with the Maine Warden Service surrounded the property as John Burbank watched TV and refused to leave his house.

“I never touched my weapon,” Burbank said. “But I was told if it makes anyone feel threatened, that's enough.”

Victoria Burbank wanted the soil the road crew was taking from her property to ditch the side of the road, she said. She wanted the rocks dug up by the crew and the trees they cut down, too.

In 2009, she protested when then Road Commissioner Nathan Northrup wanted to drain water across the road through her rock wall. She said she plugged up the hole the crew made at the time, “and that made them mad.”

“We were just concerned water was going to go back into the road,” Jefferson selectman James Hilton said.

Burbank told selectmen at a meeting, a couple of years ago Hilton recollected, the town did not own Goose Hill Road and hired Waldoboro attorney Sam Cohen to prove it. Hilton said he was not sure if Burbank was ever able to prove her case. “It was mentioned that one time and we never heard about again.”

Since that time, the town has received state funds to maintain its roads, including the Goose Hill Road, on which the town has its easement. But Burbank and at least one other resident argued against the town's definition of the road's width.

“It was always our contention it (Goose Hill Road) was 49.5 feet wide,” Hilton said. The Orff's Corner Road in Waldoboro, which extends from Goose Hill Road in Jefferson, is a three-rod road (49.5 feet wide), he said. Also, selectmen used old rock walls as references to indicate the width of town roads.

Hilton said selectmen could find nothing to back up their determination the road is three rods wide, so an attorney working for the town drafted easement language that would allow the road commissioner to maintain Goose Hill Road.

The fall 2012 referendum question that passed voter approval of a Condemnation Order (751 “yes”, 672 “no” and 40 blanks), “cures the defects in the town's title to an easement for highway purposes in the road known as Goose Hill Road, being a strip of land three rods in width, the center line of which is the center of the current traveled way along Goose Hill Road running from Route 126 in Jefferson to the Waldoboro town line, and appropriate no damages as compensation for the aforementioned easement.”

The lawsuit Burbank recently filed against the town of Jefferson alleges this Condemnation Order is unjust and does not properly compensate landowners for the taking of property. According to the lawsuit paperwork (Docket number CV-13-17), “there are no deeds dedicating this roadway for public use, as it was originally a driveway to the Plaintiff's house, the continuation of the roadway being a logging road.” Burbank said she purchased her home in 1978.

“I'm not sure where she got her information,” Hilton said, adding he could not comment further about this issue. Town officials have just recently received the summons and are not sure at this point which attorney at Bernstein Shur will be assigned to their case.