Opinion ID: 2388227
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Town of Wells Has Failed to Prove a Public Easement Has Been Established by Local Custom in the Dry Sand Area or the Intertidal Land at Moody Beach

Text: The Superior Court rejected all contentions that the public has acquired rights in Moody Beach by prescription, implied dedication, or local custom. The Town of Wells does not contest the court's prescription and dedication findings, but it does appeal the court's finding that the evidence adduced at trial fails to prove public recreational rights established in Moody Beach by local custom. We affirm the judgments of the Superior Court, but we do not find it necessary to decide whether the court was correct in holding that under the common law of Maine the public may acquire by local custom an easement over privately owned land. Very few American states recognize the English doctrine of public easements by local custom. See 3 Powell on Real Property ¶ 414[9] (1986 & Supp. 1988). The Maine case that discusses such easements in some detail, Piper v. Voorhees, 130 Me. 305, 311, 155 A. 556, 559 (1931), cites with approval the leading Connecticut case rejecting the doctrine, Graham v. Walker, 78 Conn. 130, 133-34, 61 A. 98, 99 (1905). That latter case had held: [W]e are of opinion that such rules of the English common law as gave [easements by local custom] sanction were unadapted to the conditions of political society existing here, and have never been in force in Connecticut. The inclusion of custom in 14 M.R.S.A. §§ 812 and 812-A (1980), providing a means for preventing the acquisition of easements by custom, use or otherwise, is explainable as merely a legislative exercise in overabundant caution. There is a serious question whether application of the local custom doctrine to conditions prevailing in Maine near the end of the 20th century is necessarily consistent with the desired stability and certainty of real estate titles. In any event the Superior Court's acceptance of the doctrine of local custom was not essential to its ultimate decision. That decision was adequately founded, without more, on its finding that the Town of Wells had failed to prove at least two factual predicates usually required for application of the local custom doctrine, namely, the public usage must have occurred so long as the memory of man runneth not to the contrary and it must have been peaceable and free from dispute. The Town, which bears the burden of proof on the claim of a public easement by local custom, can point to no evidence in this record that compelled the Superior Court to find that those two factual predicates are met. In these circumstances the Town of Wells cannot prevail on appeal from the trial court's adverse findings. See Luce Co. v. Hoefler, 464 A.2d 213, 215 (Me.1983). Thus, the Town of Wells takes nothing on its local custom argument, even assuming the public may acquire an easement by that means in this State.