Court Opinion

ID: 9619580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:29:57.369034+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:42.533295
License: Public Domain

ON DENIAL OF PETITION FOR REHEARING
BURNETT, Judge.
Our principal opinion holds that the buyers of real property breached a contract by causing an escrow agent to cease delivering payments to the sellers during a dispute over access to the property. We also instructed the district court on remand to determine, if necessary, whether the buyers might be entitled to access through an easement by necessity. In a petition for rehearing, the buyers now contend that if such an easement were found to exist, it would signify that the sellers had committed an antecedent breach of the land sale contract — excusing buyer’s subsequent breach — by refusing to recognize the easement from the outset. We disagree.
As the principal opinion states, the buyers purchased land without access of record. The contract contained no provision for access. An easement by necessity, if one exists in this case, is not a creature of contract; it is a creature of public policy. Such an easement arises independently from any contract and may even thwart the intent of the sellers or purchasers. See 2 G. THOMPSON, COMMENTARIES ON THE MODERN LAW OF REAL PROPERTY § 362 (5th ed. 1980). The sellers’ failure to recognize an access right outside the contract cannot logically be treated as a breach of the contract.
The buyers complain that our opinion puts them in the tenuous position of paying the balance owed on the contract without assurance of ultimately obtaining an easement. However, our opinion simply holds the buyers to their bargain. They will receive just what the contract gives them— *544land without access of record. They also will receive what the law gives them — a chance to demonstrate an entitlement to an easement by necessity.
The buyers further contend that an easement is contemplated by the contract’s covenant of quiet enjoyment. If this argument is meant to suggest that an easement was intended by the parties, it relates to an easement by implication rather than to an easement by necessity. An easement by implication, by its name, denotes an access impliedly intended by the parties. The specific elements of an easement by implication have been enunciated, and found lacking, in our principal opinion. On the other hand, if the buyers’ argument is meant to suggest a contractual link between quiet enjoyment and an easement by necessity, we believe the argument is conceptually unsound. Quiet enjoyment may depend upon access, but not invariably upon seller-furnished access. Moreover, to say that a covenant for quiet enjoyment contains a latent easement by necessity would be to expand the contract ex post facto. It would put the sellers at risk of being held in breach of contract for failure to honor an easement not bargained for and not provided in the contract itself, but later decreed by a court upon grounds of public policy. We decline to so modify the contract.
We have examined the other contentions in the petition for rehearing and find them to be unpersuasive. Consequently, the petition is denied.
WALTERS, C.J., and SWANSTROM, J., concur.