Court Opinion

ID: 9548708
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:07:29.968616+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:20.135687
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(concurring).
*361I concur, not because of any discussion of “permissive” or “adverse” user, but because it is conceded that part of the way over which the bridge was built and used for many more than 21 years, without- complaint by anyone, was owned partly by one and partly by the other of the adjoinants. This should end the matter.
The language of Sec. 345, Thompson, Real Property, 1961 Replacement, cited in the main opinion, that “Use of driveway situated half on each adjoining owner’s land for 21 years by both landowners will result in a prescriptive easement under claim of right and adverse use by both adjoining landowners to the other half of the driveway,” controls or should control. Under this doctrine inversely time is of the essence, irrespective of “permissive” or “adverse” user in the common connotation of the last term. Such a result reflected in Thompson is based on happy, convivial friendship, love and affection, not hostility or fee-fighting rock-throwing, — all of which means, in my opinion, that after a 21-year period should not place a Johnnie-come-lately, after 40 years user, in any role of a saintly, not sardonic supplicant for relief against his erstwhile pacific neighbor.
I think the defendants in putting up the gate without any official legal sanction defied the very equity they assert. The gate should be taken down, in equity and good conscience, and the question of damages for any unwarranted action in this respect should be canvassed.