Title: Wheadon v. Pearson

State: utah

Issuer: Utah Supreme Court

Document:

14 Utah 2d 45 (1962) 376 P.2d 946 GENE WHEADON AND DEANE WHEADON, HIS WIFE, PLAINTIFFS AND APPELLANTS, v. GEORGE B. PEARSON AND SARAH K. PEARSON, HIS WIFE, DEFENDANTS AND RESPONDENTS. No. 9696. Supreme Court of Utah. December 13, 1962. Bean & Bean, Layton, for appellants. Nielsen, Conder & Hansen, Salt Lake City, for respondents. CALLISTER, Justice. In a prior action plaintiffs sought to establish a right of way over the adjoining land of the defendants upon the theory of a prescriptive easement that plaintiffs and their predecessors had adversely used the alleged right of way for a continuous period in excess of 20 years. Defendants' motion for summary judgment was granted at the pretrial hearing when it was determined that the claimed period of adverse use did not amount to 20 years because for a five year period the adjoining parcels of land had been under the common ownership of the plaintiffs.[1] A motion for a new trial was denied. No appeal was taken from this judgment. Subsequently, plaintiffs filed the action now under consideration, alleging a right of way by way of an implied easement over the same strip of defendants' property that the right of way was created by the division of a parcel of land into two contiguous parcels, a portion of one being used during the single ownership as a right of way for the benefit of the other.[2] The complaint was dismissed for the reason that the prior action was res judicata. Plaintiffs appeal from this ruling. Both sides to this controversy cite and rely upon East Mill Creek Water Co. v. Salt Lake City.[3] In that case Mr. Justice Wade stated: We believe that the above-quoted statement supports the ruling of the lower court. Here, we have the same parties litigating the same subject matter an asserted right of way over defendants' property. While plaintiffs endeavored to establish this right of way by prescriptive easement in the first action, the issue or theory of implied easement, now urged in this second action, could have been urged and adjudicated in the first action. This is particularly true under our Rules of Civil Procedure which expressly permits two or more statements of a claim.[4] Policy would seem to indicate that when a plaintiff has once attempted to obtain his entire relief, based upon his entire claim, then the matter should be laid at rest. He should be denied a second attempt at substantially the same objective under a different guise.[5] Affirmed. Costs to defendants. WADE, C.J., and HENRIOD, McDONOUGH and CROCKETT, JJ., concur. [1] 2 Thompson, Real Property, Sec. 348 (rev. repl.) [2] Thompson, Real Property, Sec. 351 (rev. repl.) [3] 108 Utah 315, 159 P.2d 863. [4] Rule 8(e), Utah Rules of Civil Procedure. [5] Cleary, Res Judicata Reexamined, 57 Yale L.J. 339, 346.