Title: Barrett v. King

State: vermont

Issuer: Vermont Supreme Court

Document:

NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under V.R.A.P. 40
 as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont Reports.
 Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Vermont Supreme
 Court, 111 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 of any errors in order
 that corrections may be made before this opinion goes to press.


                                 No. 90-279


 Edward Barrett                               Supreme Court
 and Virginia Shields
                                              On Appeal from
      v.                                      Orange Superior Court

 Ernest W. and Marion C. Kunz                 November Term, 1991



 David A. Jenkins, J.

 Richard A. Cawley, Bradford, for plaintiffs-appellees

 Edwin W. Free, Jr. of Richard E. Davis Associates, Inc., Barre, for
   defendants-appellants



 PRESENT:  Gibson, Dooley, Morse and Johnson, JJ.



      JOHNSON, J.   This is a dispute between adjoining landowners over the
 nature and extent of a right-of-way that provides access over defendants'
 property to plaintiffs' property.
      Plaintiffs acquired a vacation home on a 104-acre parcel of land in
 Topsham, Vermont, from Robert Armstrong and Hollis Ewing, by warranty deed
 dated May 24, 1988.  Plaintiffs' property is virtually inaccessible without
 the use of an old road that crosses defendants' parcel.  The existence of
 the road predated plaintiffs' purchase.  Predecessors in title had also used
 this road to reach the property, and, in fact, townspeople and others had
 used the road for various recreational purposes for many years.  The deed
 conveyed to plaintiffs the 104-acre parcel and "all privileges and
 appurtenances thereof," but it did not specifically mention the right-of-
 way.  Nor was the right-of-way specified by the previous grantors, Barent
 and Constance Stryker, in the deed to Armstrong and Ewing, although the road
 was in existence on the date Armstrong and Ewing acquired the parcel, with
 all privileges and appurtenances, in 1973.
      Defendants acquired the deed to their land in 1987, also from the
 Strykers.  Defendants' chain of title shows the existence of a right-of-way
 reserved by the Strykers in a deed from them to Marcus and Janet McCorison
 on April 8, 1952.  The Strykers were farmers and used what they referred to
 as a "farm road" to gain access to the 104-acre parcel that plaintiffs now
 own.  Because the farm road went across the lands being conveyed to the
 McCorisons, the deed specified "a right-of-way across the northwest of said
 buildings which served as a farm road for [the] past several years."  The
 Strykers later repurchased the land and conveyed it to Louise Forrest in
 1961, with the same reservation repeated.  In 1969, the Strykers stopped
 farming.  The Strykers again repurchased the land from Louise Forrest and
 then conveyed it to defendants in 1987, but without the language that had
 appeared in the earlier deeds to McCorison and Forrest.
      In 1988, shortly after plaintiffs purchased their land, defendants
 constructed a barrier across the old farm road to prevent plaintiffs from
 using it to gain access to their land.  This suit followed.
      The trial court held that the easement relating to the road was not
 personal to the Strykers, but was intended to benefit the land, and that the
 use of it was general and not limited to farm purposes.  It also found that
 the Strykers had not abandoned the easement when they stopped farming, but
 that the predominant use of the road had changed.  Therefore, the court held
 the plaintiffs had an ownership interest in the right-of-way and enjoined
 defendants from obstructing it.
      On appeal, defendant raises two claims -- that the trial court erred by
 concluding that a right-of-way reserved by the original owners of the
 property was appurtenant, and not personal to them; and that the court's
 finding that the right-of-way was reserved for general use was unsupported
 by the evidence and unlawfully imposed an increased burden on defendants'
 property.  We reject these claims and affirm.
                                     I.
      The thrust of defendants' first argument is that no specific language
 in plaintiffs' deed gives them a right-of-way across defendants' land, and
 that the language mentioning a right-of-way in defendants' chain of title
 created a personal easement that was not conveyed as an appurtenance to
 plaintiffs' parcel.
      Appurtenant easements serve a parcel of land, rather than a particular
 person.  R. Cunningham, W. Stoebuck & D. Whitman, The Law of Property { 8.2,
 at 440 (1984).  The land benefited by the easement is known as the dominant
 tenement, and the land burdened by it is the servient tenement.  Id.
 Although the owner of an appurtenant easement may be said to benefit person-
 ally by its use, the benefit lasts only as long as the owner owns the land,
 and when conveyed, it passes to a new owner.  Scott v. Leonard, 119 Vt. 86,
 98,