Robert Jesurum v. WBTSCC Limited Partnership & a.

Summary

The New Hampshire Supreme Court reviewed a dispute over whether the public acquired a prescriptive easement across the defendants’ property in Rye to park and access Little Harbor Beach. The court upheld the findings that the public’s use was adverse, continuous, and sufficiently definite to establish the easement, and affirmed the scope of the easement. The court also addressed the trial court’s award of attorney’s fees under the substantial benefit theory and concluded that such an award against private litigants was unwarranted.

Holdings

1. The public established a prescriptive easement over Sanders Point because its use was extensive, open, adverse, continuous, and uninterrupted for at least twenty years.
2. The scope of the easement properly included parking at Sanders Point and use of the sandy footpath to access Little Harbor Beach, subject to the trial court's restrictions.
3. The defendants' intermittent use of Sanders Point for construction staging did not interrupt the public's continuous adverse use.
4. The trial court retained jurisdiction to act on the outstanding fee request because the defendants' initial appeal was premature and effectively interlocutory.
5. The trial court erred in awarding attorney's fees to the plaintiff under the substantial-benefit or public-benefit theory because the defendants were private parties who acted in good faith.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the plaintiff and the public established a prescriptive easement over Sanders Point by twenty years of adverse, continuous, and uninterrupted use.
2. Whether the public's use was sufficiently adverse to place the defendants on notice of an adverse claim and whether the evidence established permissive use.
3. Whether the trial court properly defined the scope of the prescriptive easement.
4. Whether the defendants' intermittent construction-related use interrupted the continuity of the public's adverse use.
5. Whether the trial court had jurisdiction to award attorney's fees after the defendants filed their appeal.
6. Whether attorney's fees could be awarded against private parties under the substantial-benefit or public-benefit theory when the parties acted in good faith.

Disposition

reversed