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Nature of Suit Code: 220
Nature of Suit: Foreclosure
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 12-1581 

ROBERT F. HOYT, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

MICHAEL L. BENHAM, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Southern District of Indiana, New Albany Division. 

No. 08 C 179 — Richard L. Young, Chief Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED NOVEMBER 6, 2015 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 8, 2016 

____________________ 

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and EASTERBROOK, 

Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Robert Hoyt—owner since 2001 of 

a 40-acre lot (on which there is a cabin) in a heavily forested 

region about an hour’s drive from Bloomington in southwestern Indiana—has a problem. His lot is surrounded by 

lots owned by others, and none of the others will allow him 

to use any part of their land to enable vehicular access to his 

property. No public roads touch his land. To reach a public 

Case: 12-1581 Document: 49 Filed: 02/08/2016 Pages: 12
2 No. 12-1581 

road he has to be able to drive through at least one of the lots 

that surround him. The owner of the lot directly to his north 

allows him to walk through that lot to and from his lot, but 

that’s it so far as access is concerned. So Hoyt has turned to 

law, thus far unsuccessfully. 

This is an overly complicated, overly litigated case—a legal monstrosity, really—and we’ll simplify it ruthlessly, beginning with a highly simplified diagram of the nine lots involved in the case (though of equal size in the diagram, we 

don’t know their actual dimensions). Hoyt’s lot is in the center. The lot to his immediate west is owned by the U.S. Forest Service, but the other lots, or at least those that Hoyt 

seeks access to, are privately owned. 

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No. 12-1581 3 

Although in principle Hoyt could obtain access to a public road from every point of the compass, in fact the only 

public road he seeks access to is the West Burma Road, 

which enters the nine-lot complex at the bottom of the 

southwestern lot and runs in a northeasterly direction 

through the southern lot and the northwestern corner of the 

southeastern lot and into the eastern lot, coming close to the 

southeastern corner of Hoyt’s lot when it crosses the northwestern corner of the southeastern lot, but not crossing into 

Hoyt’s lot. (The slanted line in the diagram approximates the 

location of the West Burma Road in relation to the lots.) 

Hoyt seeks access only through the three connected private 

roads shown by the curved vertical line in the diagram 

(which like the line representing the West Burma Road is only approximate). The route begins in the western lot (the 

Forest Service’s lot) and then passes through the southwestern and southern lots. Hoyt does not (at least in this lawsuit) 

seek access through the eastern or northern or southeastern 

lots. But his chosen route does require access to the western 

and southwestern and southern lots, rather than just to one 

or two of them. Neither the road that he’d like to use in the 

western lot, nor the road he’d like to use in the southwestern 

lot, connect to the West Burma Road directly. Rather, the 

road in the western lot connects to the road at the eastern 

edge of the southwestern lot that in turn connects to the 

short road in the southern lot that intersects the West Burma 

Road a few hundred feet south of Hoyt’s lot. (Here we pause 

briefly to mention that the facts set forth in this opinion 

come from the findings made by the district judge in ruling 

on motions for summary judgment, from the findings he 

made after the bench trial, and from deeds and other docuCase: 12-1581 Document: 49 Filed: 02/08/2016 Pages: 12
4 No. 12-1581 

ments in the record that are undisputed or accepted as authentic.) 

One might think it straightforward for Hoyt to be able to 

purchase an easement from each of the three lot owners, 

which is to say a right to use their private roads to reach the 

public road. The roads are very close to the edges of the lots, 

and one of them, the road he’d like to be able to use in the 

southwestern lot, runs right along the eastern edge of the lot. 

Because the three roads are far from the centers of the lots, 

his use of them would not cause a serious disturbance of the 

owners’ activities on their lots, at least in the short run, 

though since Hoyt currently resides in a rented house in the 

northern lot (rather than in the cabin on his own lot) he 

might change his residence to his own lot were it accessible. 

But the neighbors are unwilling to sell him an easement—

refusing even to name a price at which any of them would 

sell him one. So he has brought this suit, in which he claims 

already to have fee-simple ownership of the road on the 

southwestern lot, or alternatively easements over that lot 

and the western lot. Another alternative that he presses on 

us is that all three roads are already public roads, which anyone can use. 

He brought this suit to vindicate his claims in an Indiana 

state court in 2001, and later added claims against the Forest 

Service under both Indiana law and the federal Quiet Title 

Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2409a, and also (though just under Indiana 

law) against the owners of the other two roads. The Forest 

Service (technically the United States) removed the suit 

against it to federal district court in 2008. The district court 

retained supplemental jurisdiction over the private defendCase: 12-1581 Document: 49 Filed: 02/08/2016 Pages: 12
No. 12-1581 5 

ants, 28 U.S.C. § 1367, and as far as we’re aware there’s been 

no further litigation in state court. 

The district judge granted motions to dismiss or motions 

for summary judgment in favor of the defendants on some 

counts of the complaint, and entered judgment for them on 

the remaining counts after a bench trial. So Hoyt lost his 

case, and now appeals. 

The great Holmes once said in a letter to his friend Frederick Pollock: “I long have said there is no such thing as a

hard case. I am frightened weekly but always when you 

walk up to the lion and lay hold the hide comes off and the 

same old donkey of a question of law is underneath.” That is 

an apt description of the present case. At first glance the case 

is formidable indeed. Hoyt’s third amended complaint, filed 

in June 2009, contains 70 paragraphs and his opening brief in 

this court is 59 pages long—144 pages long if the appendices 

are included. The brief’s table of authorities lists 140 judicial 

decisions and 30 other items. The three appellee briefs and 

Hoyt’s reply brief are of more modest dimensions and contain fewer citations, but cumulatively are formidable. The 

litigation is in its fifteenth year, even though the bench trial 

lasted only two days, and has been pending in this court 

since 2012 even though oral argument was not held until late 

in 2015. 

The duration of this litigation is inexplicable and inexcusable—for it’s actually a pretty simple case! Let’s begin 

with Hoyt’s claim against the Forest Service. He argues that 

he has a “prescriptive easement” in the private road in the 

Forest Service’s lot that connects to the private road in the 

southwestern lot that in turn connects to the private road in 

the southern lot and, via the West Burma Road, to the outCase: 12-1581 Document: 49 Filed: 02/08/2016 Pages: 12
6 No. 12-1581 

side world. To obtain a property right by prescription 

(which is to say by adverse possession rather than by purchase or discovery) requires in the case of an easement—

which so far as pertains to this case is a right to travel across 

someone else’s land—that the would-be acquirer have used 

the road or path in which he claims the easement continuously for a specified period of time (under Indiana law, 20 

years), and that by the nature of his use he has put the owner 

on notice of his claiming an easement. Wilfong v. Cessna 

Corp., 838 N.E.2d 403, 405–06 (Ind. 2005). Although such 

easements (called “prescriptive”) can’t be acquired over federal land, the federal government can purchase land that is 

already subject to a prescriptive easement, as Hoyt is arguing happened to the western lot in 1967; if the government 

does that, the easement remains in force. 

Hoyt did not own the central lot, bordering on the Forest 

Service’s lot, back then, let alone for 20 years before then; he 

didn’t acquire his lot until 2001. He claims that a previous 

owner of the lot had used the road in the western lot between 1930 and 1954, but there is no evidence that this use 

continued for the next 13 years—that is, before the Forest 

Service acquired the lot—or for that matter afterward, and 

lack of subsequent use could support a finding of abandonment even if a prescriptive easement had been obtained. 

Critically, Hoyt offers no support for his claim that the use of 

the road by his predecessor was under a claim of right or 

otherwise adverse to the lot’s owner, or that that owner was 

on notice of any such claim. Hoyt’s claim to a right to use the 

Forest Service’s road thus fails. 

We turn our gaze to the road to which the Forest Service’s road connects in the lot immediately to its south. That 

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No. 12-1581 7 

is the straight road that runs down the eastern edge of the 

southwestern lot from the point at which the western and 

southwestern and southern lots touch the southwestern corner of Hoyt’s lot. (The parties refer to this road, which is 30 

feet wide and about 590 feet long, as The Strip or the .41 

Acre Strip. We’ll call it the Strip.) Some time before Hoyt 

bought his lot, it and the southwestern lot had been under 

common ownership, and there was traffic between the two 

lots. But this traffic must also have crossed the western and 

southern lots, because the point of contact between what is 

now Hoyt’s lot and the southwestern lot is just that—a point, 

having no width. And that’s actually a serious problem for 

his case. Had he access to the north-south road in the Forest 

Service’s lot, he would be connected to the Strip. Without 

that access, which the Forest Service refuses to grant him, he 

has no way to reach the roads in the southwestern and 

southern lots. Since the West Burma Road crosses the 

southwestern lot (see diagram), anyone with access to that 

lot has access to a public road. So if Hoyt owned the Strip (as 

he claims), he could get from there to the West Burma Road, 

but he would still need a way to get from his property to the 

Strip. 

In 1954 the owner of the two lots sold the southwestern 

one. The sale could have cut off the seller from access to the 

West Burma Road; the record doesn’t indicate whether the 

seller made any provision (as by retaining an easement) for 

giving him access to the West Burma Road through the 

southwestern lot. Eleven years later, however, the owners of 

the western lot, wanting access to the West Burma Road via 

the southwestern lot, bought from the owner of that lot the 

Strip, described in the deed as a “right of way.” When the 

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8 No. 12-1581 

Forest Service bought the western lot it also purchased an 

easement over the Strip. 

In 2007, six years after Hoyt bought his lot, the heir of the 

former owners of the western lot quitclaimed the Strip to 

Hoyt, and he argues that what he got was fee simple in the 

right of way. He reasons that the owners of the western lot 

had owned the Strip in fee simple and had sold only an 

easement to the Forest Service, leaving them still owning the 

Strip. The owners of the southwestern lot disagree. They 

claim that the 1965 deed conveyed only an easement, which 

was then sold to the Forest Service in 1967, with the result 

that there was nothing left for the heir to quitclaim to Hoyt 

in 2007. 

One might think that Hoyt would be content with an 

easement and not insist as he does on being the owner of the 

road—an absurd insistence because if valid it would enable 

him to prevent the owner of the southwestern lot from using 

the road unless that owner bought an easement from him. 

Hoyt could have obtained an easement even though the Forest Service also has one, but he could have obtained it only 

from the Strip’s owner because if the owner of the western 

lot had purchased only an easement in the Strip in 1965 he 

had only one easement to sell, and having sold it to the Forest Service he couldn’t sell it to Hoyt. 

Even if Hoyt had an easement, his use of the road would 

be limited to what it was when the easement was granted. 

An easement is granted on the basis of an understanding of 

what the owner of the easement will be allowed to do with 

it—and it hasn’t been shown that the understanding of what 

the owners of the western lot could do on the road in the 

southwestern lot included paving a road, as Hoyt wants to 

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No. 12-1581 9 

do. And much of the time the Strip was not a road at all, but 

just a strip of land on which a road might be (and eventually 

was) built. Now there’s a gravel road, and Hoyt wants to be 

able to drive an automobile over it. But there is nothing to 

suggest that he could have obtained an easement that would 

have allowed him to drive back and forth on the Strip between the West Burma Road and his lot when the Strip did 

not exist as a road, for he would have needed an easement 

that expressly allowed him to build a road on another person’s property. 

He bases his claim of a right to access the Strip on a 1965 

deed that created a “right of way” on the Strip, and the term 

is usually—and we’ll assume in this case—equivalent to an 

easement. See Brown v. Penn Central Corp., 510 N.E.2d 641, 

644 (Ind. 1987); Clark v. CSX Transportation, Inc., 737 N.E.2d 

752, 758–59 (Ind. App. 2000). But the deed that conferred the 

right of way was made to someone else, and anyway Hoyt’s 

primary reliance is on a 2007 quitclaim deed. That deed indeed purports to convey the Strip to Hoyt, but the deed was 

granted by someone who didn’t have any property interest 

in the Strip. At times when there was (as there seems to have 

been only intermittently) a usable road on the Strip, as there 

is now, the owner of the Strip had every right to forbid 

Hoyt’s predecessor, as he now forbids Hoyt, to use the road. 

Hoyt’s predecessor acceded without protest. 

Hoyt has also failed to prove that the road on the Strip 

(and the connecting segments on the western and southern 

lots) has become a public road, open to all. Jackson v. Board of 

Commissioners, 916 N.E.2d 696, 703–04 (Ind. App. 2009), explains that “a road does not become a public road simply 

because the owner selectively permits a few members of the 

Case: 12-1581 Document: 49 Filed: 02/08/2016 Pages: 12
10 No. 12-1581 

public to use it ... . There was no evidence that people other 

than neighbors, campers, and government officials used the 

road after 1977. These were all people [whom the owners] 

gave permission to use the road. ... As there is no evidence 

the public used the road for twenty years, the [County] 

Commissioners did not prove it became a public road by 

public use.” Our case is similar. As the district court found, 

the only people who used the road for the required twentyyear period were horseback riders, and horseback riding is 

too selective a use of a private road to convert it to a public 

highway. (Some old cases say that a “horseway” or “footway” can be a public way, e.g., Pitser v. McCreery, 88 N.E. 

303, 305, 307 (Ind. 1909), but we find no cases that hold that 

in the automobile era an owner’s permitting foot or horse 

traffic creates a public highway, which therefore is from then 

on open to all vehicles.) There is just a handful of reports of 

tire tracks or four-wheelers being seen on the road, and although Hoyt’s predecessor did drive a pickup truck on the 

road, he did so only for six years. 

Hoyt’s final claim is that he has an easement of necessity 

over the southwestern lot. If the severance of two properties 

leaves one without access to a public road, the newly landlocked property acquires by operation of law an easement 

across the property that still has access. See, e.g., Cockrell v. 

Hawkins, 764 N.E.2d 289, 292–93 (Ind. App. 2002). Hoyt 

claims that the severance of his lot from the southwestern lot 

in 1954 deprived him of access to a public road, because the 

only access was over the western and southwestern lots. But 

he has not shown that his predecessor had any right to cross 

the western lot before the severance in 1954; and if not the 

severance isn’t responsible for Hoyt’s lack of access. More 

important, he hasn’t shown that his predecessor could not 

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No. 12-1581 11 

have used a northerly route in 1954, when the northern lot 

was under the same ownership as his lot. 

A further obstacle to Hoyt’s claimed right of access is that 

many of his theories, even if successful, would give him access only to particular segments of road, and not a complete 

path from his lot to the West Burma Road. Notably he wants 

to drive down the Strip to its intersection with a short road 

in the southern lot that intersects the West Burma Road. But 

to be allowed to use this route he would need—what he 

does not have—a right of access to the short road in the 

southern lot even if he has (which to repeat he has not) a 

right of access to the north-south road in the southwestern 

lot. 

And that’s it for Hoyt. Even if he had an easement over 

the Forest Service’s road, which he doesn’t, and an easement 

over the road abutting the eastern border of the southwestern lot (the Strip), which he also doesn’t, he could not reach 

the West Burma Road (the public road that is the goal of his 

access quest) because he has no right of access to the road in 

that lot that runs from the Strip to the West Burma Road. 

And anyway that little road in the southern lot and the connecting road in the southwestern lot, even if they were once 

public roads, have been abandoned because there is no evidence of any public use other than by pedestrians since 1990. 

So plainly there is no public road between Hoyt’s lot and the 

West Burma Road in the southern lot, and equally plainly he 

has no right to insist on free passage from his lot to the public road over the string of roads discussed in this opinion. 

There are some other issues, but they are of no general 

significance and we’ll let their resolution by the district court 

stand without further discussion—with one exception. The 

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12 No. 12-1581 

owners of the southern lot ask us to award them fees under 

Fed. R. App. P. 38 to compensate them for the cost of opposing Hoyt’s appeal, on the ground that the appeal is frivolous. 

But to be entitled to such fees they would have had to ask for 

them in a separate motion, Heinen v. Northrop Grumman 

Corp., 671 F.3d 669, 671 (7th Cir. 2012), which they failed to 

do. And so their motion for fees is denied and the judgment 

of the district court is 

AFFIRMED

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