Today was court...

Hello Patch readers, 
Today was our first court date for 'Criminal Trespassing'. Unfortunately, Brandon did not go before the judge, he only spoke with the prosecuting attorney. He seemed confused as to why Brandon was being accused of this for doing something nice for someone! He also said he 'sympathized' with Brandon, but unfortunately because there was a posted sign on the garage saying NO TRESPASSING that Brandon technically broke the law.

Just in case you are completely lost, about a month ago, Brandon mowed our neighbor's lawn (since he works 2nd shift & he is a nice guy). We will call this neighbor "Billy" for confidentiality reasons. "Billy" lives in the house directly south of us, and his landlord is next to him. "Billy" is cool, he has chit chatted with us and entertains Gia's long conversations in the driveway. He seems to be a very nice neighbor, just trying to work & live a good life. Anyway, he has told us before that we are welcome anytime to come over to his yard & get fire wood. We never knew that "Billy" was renting his home, we thought it was his! So now, back to what happened at court:

Brandon's argument over and over was this: The landlord is renting to a tenant, the tenant has invited us to his property (to get fire wood anytime we want, in his words). The landlord simply cannot say who can & cannot be on the property if he has invited us to be there. Although, according to the prosecuting attorney, that's wrong. She can just because of that NO TRESPASSING sign. 

I'd love to hear opinions...are we wrong? I mean we obviously know that our neighbor (the landlord of the house) hates our guts for some reason, but is that grounds for filing charges against someone who is doing a good deed? We hate that "Billy" is caught in the middle of this! We don't want to put him in any awkward situations with his landlord. It really isn't fair.