Court Opinion

ID: 9609498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:27:55.872566+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:53:14.858480
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority states that it is appropriate to consider the “equities” in a matter such as this, and that relief could be denied if it is contrary to “ ‘fairness and good conscience.’ ”
I think relief should be denied in this case because it is contrary to “fairness and good conscience.” The plaintiff now has adequate access to his property from an improved city street. He has no pressing need to cross his neighbor’s land and to prevent the neighbor from building on his own land. There is therefore no valid reason, in my view, to allow the plaintiff to appropriate a portion of his neighbor’s property.
The consequence of this opinion will hardly promote good relations among neighbors. Rather, it is more likely to promote a prickly litigiousness on the part of neighbors by encouraging trespass actions to prevent later prescriptive easements.
I would hold that a private prescriptive easement is subject to an implied condition of extinguishment when the user obtains new and substantially equal access by a public road.
MAUGHAN, J., heard the arguments, but died before the opinion was filed.