Bishields v. Campbell et ux., 200 Md. 622

Summary

The Maryland Court of Appeals addresses the scope of a prescriptive right-of-way easement and the servient owner's ability to maintain gates across it. The court holds that prior unlocked gates limited, but did not defeat, the prescriptive easement, and reverses the portion of the decree categorically prohibiting any gate or obstruction.

Holdings

1. Absent an agreement or surrounding circumstances showing otherwise, the owner of the servient estate may maintain gates at the beginning and termination of a right-of-way, so long as the use does not unreasonably interfere with the easement.
2. The decree could not categorically prohibit the defendant from maintaining any gate or obstruction because the prior use established a right to passage, not necessarily a right to an entirely unobstructed roadway. The second paragraph of the decree was therefore stricken.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the servient-estate owner could maintain a gate across a prescriptive right-of-way where prior gates had existed but had not prevented passage.
2. Whether the injunction barring the defendant from maintaining any gate or other obstruction conformed to the Court of Appeals' prior opinion and the scope of the prescriptive easement.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded