Opinion ID: 2513925
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Rights at Issue

Text: The parties, at various points in the voluminous briefing of this twenty-one year-old litigation, agree that the rights at issue are most appropriately characterized as profits à prendre. A profit à prendrein modern parlance, a profitis an easement that confers the right to enter and remove timber, minerals, oil, gas, game, or other substances from land in the possession of another. Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes § 1.2(2)(1998) [hereinafter Restatement]. Thus, a profit is a type of easement. This court has described an easement as a right conferred by grant, prescription or necessity authorizing one to do or maintain something on the land of another which, although a benefit to the land of the former, may be a burden on the land of the latter. Lazy Dog Ranch v. Telluray Ranch Corp., 965 P.2d 1229, 1234 (Colo.1998)(quotation marks omitted). An easement can be in gross or appurtenant. An easement in gross does not belong to an individual by virtue of her ownership of land, but rather is a personal right to use another's property. Lewitz v. Porath Family Trust, 36 P.3d 120, 122 (Colo.App. 2001). An easement appurtenant, on the other hand, runs with the land. It is meant to benefit the property, or an owner by virtue of her property ownership. See Lazy Dog, 965 P.2d at 1234. An easement is presumed to be appurtenant, rather than in gross. Lewitz, 36 P.3d at 122; Restatement, supra, § 4.5(2). In this case, the landowners allege that the settlement rights were to be used in connection with their land. They argue that the firewood was used to heat their homes, the timber to frame their adobe houses, and the grazing necessary to the viability of their farms. The landowners also assert that the settlement rights were granted to their predecessors in title by virtue of their interest in their vara strips and were in fact a necessary incentive for settlement in the area. We conclude that the rights the landowners are claiming are best characterized as easements appurtenant to the land. We reach this conclusion from the evidence that under Mexican custom access to common land was given to surrounding landowners, the evidence that this access was used to benefit the use of the land, and the presumption in favor of appurtenant easements. Having established the nature of the rights at issue, we now turn to the sources of these rights.