Community Feed Store, Inc. v. Northeastern Culvert Corp. case brief

Community Feed Store, Inc. v. Northeastern Culvert Corp. case brief summary
559 A.2d 1068 (Vt. 1989)

CASE SYNOPSIS

Plaintiff corporate landowner sought review of the decision of the Windham Superior Court (Vermont), which entered judgment in favor of defendant adjacent landowner in the corporate landowner's action that claimed a prescriptive easement over a portion of the adjacent landowner's property. Judgment was also entered in favor of the adjacent landowner in its counterclaim for ejectment.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY
The trial court entered judgment in favor of the adjacent landowner because it determined that the corporate landowner had failed to prove with sufficient particularity the width and length of the easement and any use of the area in question by the corporate landowner was made with the permission of the adjacent landowner. 

DISCUSSION

• The court reversed and remanded the judgment. 
• The court held that the corporate landowner had enough evidence to have proven the general outlines of the prescriptive easement with reasonable certainty and therefore it met its burden. 
• The court also held that record supported a conclusion that the corporate landowner used the property in an open, notorious, continuous, and adverse manner for more than 15 years. 
• Therefore, the corporate landowner's use of the property constituted a prescriptive easement.

CONCLUSION
The court reversed and remanded the trial court's judgment in favor of the adjacent landowner with directions to enter judgment in favor of the corporate landowner.

NOTES
Community Feed Store claimed a prescriptive easement over a portion of a gravel area used by its vehicles but owned by Northeastern. The trial court found for Northeastern because use was not stated with enough specificity to establish a prescriptive easement and that the use was consensual.

1. Rule: A general outline of consistent use is sufficient to est. a prescriptive easement.
2. Rule: Presumption with Prescriptive Easements that the use is adverse. (unless used by the general public-policy reasoning to make people share their land).
3. Court also used tacking here.
4. Ejectment: An action to oust someone in possession of real property unlawfully and to restore possession to the party lawfully entitled.

Although traditionally the public could not acquire an easement by prescription because of difficult of proving continuity of use (how do you define public), the modern trend is that the public may acquire prescriptive easements, while often presuming that public access to private land is permissive in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary.