Summary
The Massachusetts Appeals Court held that the defendant acquired a prescriptive easement permitting ingress, egress, and parking of motor vehicles over the disputed driveway area through open, continuous, and adverse use exceeding twenty years. The court rejected the master's conclusion that the defendant acquired fee title by adverse possession, struck the corresponding judgment provision, and otherwise affirmed the judgment with modifications requiring a recordable legal description of the driveway easement.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the defendant acquired a prescriptive easement that included the right to park motor vehicles on the driveway easement area.
- Whether the defendant acquired fee title to the driveway easement area by adverse possession.
- Whether the master's exclusion of correspondence between the parties' attorneys was erroneous.
- Whether the master was required to append records of excluded evidence absent a timely request by a party.
Holdings
- The defendant acquired a prescriptive easement permitting ingress, egress, and the parking of motor vehicles because the use by the defendant and her predecessors was actual, open, continuous, notorious, and adverse for more than twenty years, and the plaintiffs did not effectively block or interrupt the prescriptive use.
- The defendant did not acquire fee title to the driveway easement area by adverse possession on the master's subsidiary findings. Those findings supported only a prescriptive easement permitting ingress, egress, and parking.
- The master properly excluded correspondence between the attorneys because it was not material to any issue in the case.
- The master was required to make a record of excluded evidence only when a party timely requested one; the master acted within his authority in reporting that no such request had been made.
Key quotations
“The thrust of the complaint is that the defendant has permitted motor vehicles to be parked on the "driveway easement" in contravention of the terms of the easement, which allows only ingress and egress.” (9 Mass. App. Ct. at 330)
“Title in fee, which is presumably the title to which the master refers, and an easement are different.” (9 Mass. App. Ct. at 332)
“The master is required to make a record of the evidence only when a party so requests.” (9 Mass. App. Ct. at 333)
Factual background
The parties owned contiguous parcels in Sharon, Massachusetts. In 1974 they exchanged deeds granting reciprocal easements, including a 132-square-foot driveway easement for ingress and egress and the right to repair, renew, and resurface the driveway. The defendant and her predecessors had used the area for more than twenty years, including parking motor vehicles, and the plaintiffs challenged parking as beyond the easement's terms. The defendant asserted rights based on the deed, implication, and prescription, while the master also concluded that she had acquired fee title by adverse possession.
Procedural history
The case was tried to a master, whose report after recommittal was adopted under Mass. R. Civ. P. 53(e)(2). Judgment entered for the defendant. The Appeals Court affirmed the judgment as modified, striking the paragraph purporting to recognize fee title by adverse possession and requiring a recordable description of the driveway easement boundaries.
Remand instructions
The judgment was to be modified by striking paragraph 2 and including a description of the legal boundaries of the driveway easement suitable for recording in the registry of deeds. As so modified, the judgment was affirmed.