Court Opinion

ID: 9756247
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:18:15.620378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:16.975702
License: Public Domain

Dissenting opinion by
Justice KELLER.
Because the fifty-foot easement was extinguished when the Ginns acquired the 78.181 acre tract on which the easement was located, I dissent and would affirm the Court of Appeals.
When the Meade families conveyed the 18 acre tract to Licking Pork, they granted Licking Pork a fifty-foot-wide easement across their property to provide access to Highway 1123 from the 18 acre tract, as shown on the following plat:
[[Image here]]
In granting this easement, the Meade families merely granted Licking Pork the right to pass over land which the Meade families retained ownership of. An easement is not a grant of the land itself, nor is it a setting aside of land for use by others; rather it is simply a grant of an intangible *323right to use the land, and nothing more.1
This easement was only for the benefit of the 18 acre tract (the dominant tenement, with the Meade families’ property being the servient tenement) and, therefore, was an easement appurtenant only to that tract. Under well-settled rules of property law, however, this easement was extinguished when the Ginns became the owners of both the 18 acre tract (dominant tenement) and the 78.181 acre tract containing the roadway (servient tenement):
When one party acquires a fee title to both the servient and dominant estates, the easement merges into the interest of the servient estate and terminates. Thus, any time the party who owns an easement right acquires legal ownership of a servient tenement, the easement associated with that parcel is extinguished. Such unity of possession destroys all existing easements, because a person cannot have an easement on land that he or she owns.2
Because a grantor of an easement still has the right of full dominion and use of the land over which the easement is granted, the language in the contract which claims to reserve unto the Meade families the use of the fifty-foot-wide roadway on their property was merely superfluous and did not create an easement appurtenant to the Meade families’ property:
“[T]he general grant of a passway, or right of way, over the land of the grant- or at a particular place, does not confer either the possession or the right of possession of the land, but the mere right of way, or of passing over it.... Notwithstanding such a grant, there remains with the grantor the right of full dominion and use of the land, except so far as a limitation of his right is essential to the fair enjoyment of the right of way which he has granted. It is not necessary that the grantor should expressly reserve any Hght which he may exercise consistently with a fair enjoyment of the grant. Such rights remain with him, because they are not granted. And for the same reason, the exercise of any of them cannot be complained of by *324the grantee, who can claim no other limitation upon the rights of the grantor, but such as are expressed in the grant, or necessarily implied in the right of reasonable enjoyment.”
... “The creation of a private way does not take from the owner of the land over which it passes any portion of the fee of the soil. Regardless of how acquired, a private way carries with it by implication only such incidents as are necessary to its reasonable enjoyment. The owner of the land has the right to use the way for any purpose whatever, provided he does not interfere with the right of passage resting in the owner of the easement. Hence, the grant of a right of way, which is not exclusive in its terms and which can be reasonably enjoyed without being exclusive, leaves in the grantor and his assigns the right of user in common with the grantee. The owner of the servient tenement may sow crops on the right of way if such action does not interfere with the rights of the owner of the dominant tenement.”3
At most, the language reserving the Meade families’ right to use the roadway was simply a restatement of this well-settled rule of property law since they had a right to use the roadway located on their property regardless of whether such right was reserved.4
Another well-settled rule is that “a person cannot have an easement on land that he or she owns.”5 The majority’s approach is untenable in that it not only violates this well-settled rule of property law, but it also creates a novel and unprecedented rule that such an easement is appurtenant to the property located on both sides of the easement even though the property on both sides of it, and on which the easement itself is located, is owned by the same person. This is not the law, never has been, and never should be. The doctrine .of stare decisis is of utmost importance when the issue involves real property, and this Court should not adopt a novel rule of property law, especially when the prior rule has not been shown to be incorrect. Unfortunately, the majority opinion fails to adhere to the doctrine.
The contract language did not create an easement appurtenant to the Meade families’ property for two reasons: one, Licking Pork did not own the land on which the fifty-foot roadway was located, and thus, it could not grant the Meade families an easement across it; and two, the Meade families owned the land on which the fifty-foot roadway was located, and consequently, they could not grant themselves an easement.6 Even if the purpose of the contract language was to reserve an easement, it failed to do so because any ease*325ment the Meade families reserved on their own property instantaneously merged with the title to the property and was extinguished.7
Quite simply, the Meade families should not have conveyed the fifty-foot strip of land on which the easement is located or they should have expressly reserved an easement when they conveyed the 78.181 acre tract — that is the only way that they could have reserved an easement on the conveyed tract. Their failure to do so means that the Appellants now have no right to use the roadway and the Ginns may prohibit them from doing so.
In conclusion, the fifty-foot easement was appurtenant only to the 18 acre tract and was extinguished when the Ginns became the owners of both tracts. The contract language reserving the Meade families’ right to use the roadway was simply a restatement of the law since they had a right to use the roadway located on their property as long as they owned it, regardless of whether such right was reserved. The contract language, therefore, did not create an easement appurtenant to the Meade families’ remaining property, and the Meade families failed to reserve an easement when they conveyed the 78.181 acre tract. For these reasons, I dissent and would affirm the Court of Appeals.
LAMBERT, C.J., joins this dissenting opinion.

. See 25 Am. Jur. 2d Easements and Licenses § 1 (2004) ("An easement is a privilege which one person has a right to enjoy over the land of another for the benefit of the easement holder’s land, but it does not create an interest in the land itself." (footnote omitted; emphasis added)).

. 25 Am. Jur. 2d Easements and Licenses § 100 (2004) (footnotes omitted); see Cameron v. Barton, Ky., 272 S.W.2d 40, 42 (1954) ("Appellant finally contends that the easement in controversy was extinguished by merger when a former owner of the dominant estate bought an adjoining lot which offered a means of ingress and egress to and from the Highway Department’s property. The answer to this contention is that the doctrine of merger could not apply because the former owner of the dominant estate did not acquire the ser-vient estate." (emphasis added)); Sievers v. Flynn, 305 Ky. 325, 204 S.W.2d 364 (1947) (holding that an easement is not a separate estate when dominant and servient tracts are under the same ownership); City of Franklin v. St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, 188 Ky. 161, 168, 221 S.W. 503, 506 (1920) ("It is equally as thoroughly established that, when the owner of an easement acquires the fee-simple title to the land in which he had the easement, the easement is thereby extinguished. ...”); Rogers v. Flick, 144 Ky. 844, 139 S.W. 1098, 1099 (1911) (citing 2 Wash-burn on Real Property, 373) (”[A]n easement is not destroyed or extinguished by the union of the dominant and servient estates, unless the fee in both is acquired and united in the same person." (emphasis added)); 25 Am.Jur.2d Easements and Licenses § 1 (2004) ("When one party acquires a present posses-sory fee simple title to both the servient and dominant tenements, the easement merges into the fee of the servient tenement and is terminated.”); Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes § 7.5 (2000) ("A servitude is terminated when all the benefits and burdens come into a single ownership.”).

. Holbrook v. Hammond, 302 Ky. 10, 13-14, 192 S.W.2d 746, 747-748 (1946) (quoting Maxwell v. McAtee, 48 Ky. (9 B. Mon.) 20 (1848); 17 Am.Jur. 998 § 101 (emphasis added)); also Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes § 4.9 (2000) ("[T]he holder of the servient estate is entitled to make any use of the servient estate that does not unreasonably interfere with enjoyment of the servitude.”).

. See Holbrook, 302 Ky. 10, 192 S.W.2d 746 (1946); Restatement (Third) of Property: Ser-vitudes § 4.9 (2000).

. 25 Am Jur. 2d Easements and Licenses § 100 (2004) (footnote omitted); see also 25 Am. Jur. 2d Easements and Licenses § 1 (2004) ("A person may not have an easement in his or her own land because an easement merges with the title, and while both are under the same ownership the easement does not con- . stitute a separate estate. It follows that no easement exists so long as there is a unity of ownership of the properties involved.” (footnotes omitted)).

. 25 Am. Jur. 2d Easements and Licenses §§ 1, 100 (2004).

. 25 Am. Jur. 2d Easements and Licenses § 100 (2004) ("Thus, any time the party who owns an easement right acquires legal ownership of a servient tenement, the easement associated with that parcel is extinguished.”).