Washington County, UT Right to Farm: Farm Nuisance Protection (2026)

Section 9-4-3, Collection Of Damages, states that except as otherwise provided, no person, firm or corporation is entitled to collect damages, and no court in the state may award damages, for a trespass of livestock onto farms, subdivisions or other private property in the county, if the land was not enclosed by a legal fence at the time of the trespass. That legal fence standard, set out in section 9-4-1, requires at least four horizontal barriers spaced no more than 12 inches apart, posts no more than 20 feet apart and at least 48 inches tall, capable of withstanding a 250-pound horizontal strain.

Section 9-4-2 places the burden of meeting that standard on the property owner seeking to exclude animals, not on the livestock owner, effectively protecting ranching and grazing operations from liability for animals that wander onto neighboring land the owner failed to fence. Section 9-4-4 narrows the chapter's reach further by exempting land used primarily for farming purposes from the fencing duty altogether, while still holding the duty over land bordering United States land used for grazing. Together these sections function as Washington County's version of a fence-out law: livestock owners are not liable for trespass onto unfenced ground, so the protection runs to the animal owner rather than through a nuisance exemption for farm operations themselves.