Court Opinion

ID: 9684884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:17:50.252397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:00.536377
License: Public Domain

Wendell L. Griffen, Judge, dissenting. Although the majority would affirm the chancellor’s decision declaring a prescriptive easement across a driveway owned by the appellants’ (deacons of Unity Baptist Church), I believe that appellees failed to prove adverse use of the property as required by our case law. Therefore, I respectfully dissent. Danny and Connie Jones purchased a tract of land adjacent to property owned by Unity Church in April 1984. Appellees’ property was purchased from Ronald Eaton, who had purchased the tract from Harold McClendon in February 1984. McClendon and his wife had purchased the tract from Anthony and Mary Johnson in December 1973. Anthony Johnson is a deacon of Unity Church. In Saline County, access to appellees’ property is possible by crossing through the Unity Baptist property and then crossing property owned by International Paper Company to reach Unity Road. A driveway existed through those properties when McClendon acquired the tract from the Johnsons. Anthony Johnson testified that the Unity Baptist Church voted to permit McClendon to use that driveway. However, appellee Danny Jones did not know that the driveway was not his land (despite the fact that it was located on the church property and was not described in his deed from Eaton). He and his wife used the driveway from the time they acquired their property without objection from the church. He testified that he made minor repairs to the driveway (replacing gravel). When he and his wife attempted to obtain financing on their home to make some repairs, they learned that the financing institution would not extend credit because they did not have legal right to use the driveway. Jones obtained an easement from International Paper. Unity Baptist indicated that it would consent to continued use of the driveway, but would not agree to an alienable easement. Jones then sued the church elders, claiming a prescriptive easement in the driveway through the church property. The chancellor granted the prescriptive easement, holding that because appellees and their predecessors in title had continuously used the driveway for at least twenty-three years, had not asked permission to use the road from the church elders, and because the elders had not acted to prevent that use or object to it, the continuous use was adverse use for purposes of satisfying the requirement for a prescriptive easement. Whether one follows the reasoning of our decisions dating to Fullenwider v. Kitchens, 223 Ark. 442, 226 S.W.2d 281 (1954), which hold that, to establish a prescriptive easement, the true owner must either know or be presumed to know of the adverse character of the claimant’s possession based on the facts and circumstances of the claimant’s use, or the alternative fine of cases dating to Manitowoc Remanufacturing v. Vocque, 307 Ark. 271, 819 S.W.2d 275 (1991), which hold that the claimant must take affirmative steps to put the true owner on notice of an adverse claim to support a prescriptive easement, Arkansas case law clearly requires that the claimant prove adverse use for seven years. There must be a “distinct and positive assertion ... of a right hostile to the owner.” Harper v. Hannibal, 241 Ark. 508, 408 S.W.2d 591 (1966). Although appellees, as claimants, had the burden of demonstrating adverse use, they presented no proof that they ever asserted a right to use the driveway that was adverse to the church. They simply argued that they were entitled to a prescriptive easement because they and their predecessors in title had used the driveway continuously and openly without objection or permission from the church. If the law of prescriptive easement required no more than this, I could join the majority and vote to affirm the chancellor. However, the law of prescriptive easement requires that a claimant prove open, continuous, and adverse use. None of our cases provide that adverse use is demonstrated merely by proof of continuous and open permissive use, whether by the claimant or by the claimant’s predecessors in interest. The fact that there were successive users between the initial permissive use to Eaton and the use exercised by appellees is immaterial given that none of the successive users claimed or exercised an adverse use as to appellants. Yet that is the upshot of the decision announced today. It is difficult to understand how continuous permissive use of a driveway can rise over time to a prescriptive right when that use involved no activity that was hostile to the right of the owner of the property that the driveway traverses. Here we have no proof that appellees erected a fence, gate, or other barrier across the driveway so as to suggest an interest in it that was something other than that of a permissive user. The fact that appellees made minor repairs to the driveway certainly was not an adverse action to appellants; after all, appellees used the gravel driveway without charge, interruption, or disagreement. That they made minor repairs to a driveway they used for free demonstrates nothing more than common courtesy, not that they held or claimed a legal right to the land across which they drove every day. Despite appellees’ argument that the repairs evidenced adverse use, the repairs were no more adverse to appellants’ interest than would be the act of having a flat tire fixed on a vehicle that one has been permitted to use by another. Contrary to appellees’ argument, appellants did not acquiesce in an adverse use by not objecting to the use of the driveway across their property. There was no acquiescence because the use was never adverse. Acquiescence arises when the true owner fails to object or assert his rights after having received notice of an adverse claim or use, not merely because the owner’s land is used by others in a way that is not adverse for more than seven years. The reasoning employed by appellees and now validated by the majority opinion creates an adverse use from mere prolonged permissive use. This is a clear departure from the time-honored principle that permissive use cannot ripen into a legal right merely by lapse of time. See McGill v. Miller, 172 Ark. 390, 288 S.W. 932 (1926). I consider it especially anomalous that appellees — who profess that they did not know that the driveway in question was not their land — are now deemed to have intended to deprive the true owner of that land of its use by using the driveway the very way that had been permitted by appellants. Neither appellees nor the majority opinion explain how mere persistent ignorance over time rises in law or logic to clear, distinct, and unequivocal evidence of an intent to exercise an adverse interest or right over property that belongs to another as required by our supreme court. See Dillaha v. Temple, 267 Ark. 793, 590 S.W.2d 331 (1979). That persistent ignorance can be successfully massaged into a prescriptive right is the antithesis of equity. I would reverse the chancellor and am authorized to state that Judge Crabtree joins in this opinion.