Opinion ID: 4116908
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Private Rights to Willow Street

Text: [¶30] In addition to its conclusion that the public retained no rights in Willow Street, the trial court concluded that Dumas retained no private rights in Willow Street and had acquiesced to the encroachment of Carignan’s garage on any easement he might hold over the way, thereby abandoning any hypothetical easement. This conclusion, however, is supported by neither the parties’ statements of material facts nor an application of the law to those facts, for several reasons. [¶31] First, subsection 3031(2) terminates private rights only if the “private rights created by the recording of the plan are not constructed and utilized as private rights” within 20 years of recording. 23 M.R.S. § 3031(2). While we have held that the second paragraph of subsection 3031(2) applies to pre-1987 subdivision plans by reference to title 33 M.R.S. § 469-A, see Fournier, 2009 ME 25, ¶ 24, 966 A.2d 410, we have never held that the first paragraph applies to retroactively vest abutting landowners with a right of way over ways laid out in such plans. Even if subsection 3031(2) did apply retroactively, which we decline to hold at this time, there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to any historical use or construction of Willow Street. 20 [¶32] Because Carignan alleges that Willow Street was not developed or improved within the required time, which Dumas disputes, there remains a question of fact as to when Willow Street might have been privately used. Dumas does not dispute Carignan’s assertion that the easterly side of Willow Street—the side abutting Carignan’s property—has never been used, but asserts in his own statement of facts that Willow Street was used by loggers for access in the 1970s and 1980s. Neither party alleges any private use of Willow Street until the 1970s, and neither party alleges any use at all after the 1980s, with the exception of Carignan’s encroaching garage. There is therefore a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether private use was made of Willow Street to preserve Dumas’s rights, whether by operation of the Paper Streets Act or by a common law easement. [¶33] Further, the trial court erred to the extent that it found that Dumas had abandoned any easement to which he might be entitled. In order to find abandonment of an easement, the court would need to find “(1) a history of nonuse coupled with an act or omission evincing a clear intent to abandon, or (2) adverse possession by the servient estate,” neither of which is clear from the record. Laux v. Harrington, 2012 ME 18, ¶ 21, 38 A.3d 318. 21