Court Opinion

ID: 9612709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:10:46.906073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:52:13.464778
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with the well-substantiated principle enunciated by the court that a governmental unit, as well as a private entity, can acquire interest in real estate by adverse possession, including prescriptive use for roadways. However, I differ in dissent as to whether the record in this case justifies the summary-judgment relief granted to the municipality as claimant.
It is recognized that with this second appeal, economics involving roadway rights have long since been exhausted in this litigation, and some end is of considerable interest to both the litigants and the judicial system. Unfortunately, the rule enunciated extends far beyond the mislocated dirt road in the coal-mining town of Superi- or which diagonally crossed two lots and isolated a third.
This court has now reversed its established rule on the burden of proof of adversity, and at the same time has reversed summary-judgment principles. Thus, this court has invoked a preliminary denomination of adverseness when a summary judgment is involved so that movant need not attack respondent’s position with properly supported nonconclusory affidavits in order to engender a responsive requirement. It is in these reversals of established rules and principles in this modest case of major significance that I regretfully and respectfully dissent. It is not in the initial statement of either rule with which my difference arises, but rather in actual conversion or reversion of the principles when a case is applied to those summary-judgment facts.
Ira E. Koontz and Velma A. Koontz (landowner) are the record owners of Lots 20, 21, and 22, Block 12 of the Original Plat of the Town of South Superior (the town). The original plat showed Division Street to the south of Lot 22. However, for un*1270known reasons, Division Street was routed across Lots 20 and 21 of the Koontz property. The town contends that the present passageway has been located over Lots 20 and 21 of what is now the Koontz property since at least 1952 and where the town contends it has been located since at least 1952 with continued use and maintenance. After unsuccessful negotiations to purchase Lots 20 and 21 from the Koontzes in 1981, the town located new sewer lines under the platted Division Street property rather than under the existing road. Since acquisition of their property, appellants have paid property taxes on the complete lots. As mislocated, the road essentially condemns the landowner’s beneficial use of all three lots.
Appellants allege that no adverse claim to the presently located street exists, and further that no prima facie claim to a prescriptive easement demonstrating adversity was ever shown by the town. Thus, with the use not proven to be adverse, they contend the grant of summary judgment was improper. Conversely, the town claims title to the street by adverse possession or at least right to a continued use through a prescriptive easement in the public. Use was utilized to initially show adversity.
As to the burden of proof, the majority properly state the controlling rule in part:
“In order to acquire a prescriptive easement, the party asserting the existence of the easement carries the burden of proving adverse use, under color of title or claim of right, such as to put the owner of the servient estate on notice that an adverse right was being claimed. Yeckel v. Connell, Wyo., 508 P.2d 1200 (1973).” Majority opinion at 1268.
In addition, the cited case and the recited principle as stated in Gregory v. Sanders, Wyo., 635 P.2d 795 (1981) provide: “If the use is permissive, no easement can be acquired.” Yeckel v. Connell, Wyo., 508 P.2d 1200, 1202 (1973).
The dispositive issue is application of the burden to prove adversity, either to claimant in its case, or lack of adversity to landowner in resistance. It is in application of this burden that the court reverses existent precedent.
The jurisdictions vary as to whether the claimant or landowner has the burden to prove permissive use. Annot., 170 A.L.R. 776, 789 (1947). The burden shifts, depending on who is entitled to the presumption. For example, if the claimant is entitled to a presumption of adverseness, then the landowner must prove permission was given; whereas if the landowner is entitled to a presumption of permissiveness, then the claimant must prove that the use was adverse.
Some courts simply place the burden on the landowner whenever the land is used for longer than the prescriptive period. Taylor v. O’Connell, 50 Idaho 259, 295 P. 247 (1931). However, some courts place the burden on the landowner only when the land is of a certain kind, such as cleared land close to or contiguous to a residence or barn, Pasley v. Hainline, 272 Ky. 404, 114 S.W.2d 472, 473 (1938), urban or improved land, Carlson v. Craig, 264 Wis. 632, 60 N.W.2d 395 (1953), or occupied land, Cupp v. Light Gin Association, 223 Ark. 565, 267 S.W.2d 516 (1954).
The weight of authority follows the view that the claimant has the burden of proof as to the adverse nature of the use. Annot., 170 A.L.R. 776, 790 (1947), and therefore the presumption is that the use was permissive. Wyoming in recent cases has clearly followed this latter view by imposing upon the claimant the burden to prove each element of the adverse right being claimed. Caribou Four Corners, Inc. v. Chapple-Hawkes, Inc., Wyo., 643 P.2d 468, 471 (1982); Shumway v. Tom Sanford, Inc., Wyo., 637 P.2d 666, 670 (1981); Gregory v. Sanders, supra, 635 P.2d at 800; Gray v. Fitzhugh, Wyo., 576 P.2d 88, 91 (1978); Yeckel v. Connell, supra, 508 P.2d at 1202.
Two exceptions to this general rule that shift the burden of proof to the landowner have arisen in Wyoming, the first being when there is a mistake as to a boundary, City of Rock Springs v. Sturm, 39 Wyo. 494, 273 P. 908 (1929), and the second when there has been a “long continued posses*1271sion, coupled with complete dominion over the property and open and visible acts of ownership,” without a clear showing to the contrary. Meyer v. Ellis, Wyo., 411 P.2d 338, 342-343 (1966). The instant case falls into neither exception in my opinion, since there was no mistake as to the boundary of the road nor any complete dominion exercised by the Town of Superior over the roadway. Granted the town did maintain the street; however, when it came time to lay the sewer lines, it did not do so under the present location of Division Street. Use of the platted location for town purpose, coupled with continued real estate tax payment by the landowner, could be found to show that complete dominion over the properly was lacking.
Lacking a dominion-dominated decision, this court’s opinion now affords a third exception to the general burden-of-proof rule:
“ * * * Public use of a road will be deemed permissive unless a public authority has assumed supervision or control of the road or has kept it in repair. Board of County Commissioners of Sheridan County v. Patrick, 18 Wyo. 130, 139, 104 P. 531, 532 (1909).” (Emphasis added.) Majority opinion at 1268.
and
“ * * * It should be noted that this opinion does not change the rule which holds that a public roadway cannot be acquired by mere permissive public use. If the private landowner establishes through competent evidence that the public’s use is merely permissive, the question of supervision, control or maintenance is irrelevant. If the landowner fails to establish permissive use, he is still entitled to a presumption of permissive use unless the public authority establishes that it has assumed supervision or control of the road or has kept it in repair.” Majority opinion at 1268.
While use may put the owner on notice of some claim, it does not necessarily create a presumptive fact of intent to make hostile use of the road as required by Shumway v. Tom Sanford, Inc., supra. Further, this court has adopted the doctrine of neighborliness, Kammerzell v. Anderson, 69 Wyo. 252, 240 P.2d 893 (1952); Shumway v. Tom Sanford, Inc., supra, and the action of prior owners in permitting the public to use the present location of Division Street could be described as merely “a friendly mutual convenience by acts of common neighborliness” by allowing public use of an accidentally mislocated road, in exchange for the maintenance that was provided. In my view, no reason was shown to shift the presumption, and appellee would still have the burden of proof that the use was not permissive. On this summary-judgment record, no evidence of adversity was presented by the town in its supporting affidavits for summary judgment, except use itself, which then raises the second concern as a consideration of summary judgment.1
Disregarding Gregory, where this court ignored all three possible exceptions in rewriting the facts, I do not accommodate to the institutional desirability of this third exception now created by the court, and particularly so in review of the convoluted history in further application or exception in Board of County Commissioners of Sheridan County v. Patrick, 18 Wyo. 130, 104 P. 531 (1909). In Patrick itself, the roadway was denied. See Rocky Mountain Sheep Co. v. Board of County Commissioners of Carbon County, 73 Wyo. 11, 269 P.2d 314 (1954); Nixon v. Edwards, 72 Wyo. 274, 264 P.2d 287 (1953); Hatch Brothers Company v. Black, 25 Wyo. 416, 171 P. 267 (1918). Furthermore, to reemphasize, Patrick, in criteria, was in the conjunctive, and as restated by this court, those criteria were in the alternative, and consequently that case as used is weak *1272precedent for any present majority conclusion.
The majority then affirm the grant of summary judgment because the two responsive affidavits speaking “to not granting permission if asked” were deemed con-clusory by the court’s analysis of substantive sufficiency of responsive affidavits. See summary judgment Stage 6 in Cordova v. Gosar, Wyo., 719 P.2d 625 (1986). However, it appears that Stage 3 of the summary-judgment analysis is where the focus should be made, because appellee had the burden to prove adverse use by sufficient substantial evidence as part of its case. Meyer v. Ellis, supra, 411 P.2d at 342. While appellee submitted affidavits concerning the maintenance of the right-of-way, the town never furnished any evidence that the use was not permissive. When the town did not establish a prima facie case for a prescriptive easement it failed to meet the Stage 3 inquiry of sufficiency of the affidavits to initially support its summary judgment. With initial failure of movant’s affidavits, there remains no need to proceed to Stage 6 responsive affidavits, and summary judgment should therefore have been denied.
The significance of the subject of whether use or possession connotes adversity as a preliminary burden, invades the entire subject of adverse possession and prescription, whether involving fence lines, structure encroachment, or access routes. By its decision, as a practical result and inconsistent with well-defined precedent, the court has shifted the burden of proof of adversity. Furthermore, since the burden should have been on the claimant to prove the adverse use, summary-judgment criteria of evidence to sustain a prima facie case as a burden of movant was not met so that the responsive character of respondent’s affidavits can properly be brought into issue. Cordova v. Gosar, supra.
I would reverse for trial, and deny present resolution on inconclusive affidavits.

. This case cannot be differentiated from Gregory v. Sanders, supra, the case which was actually tried where the access route had been used for at least 70 years prior to judicial intervention, in which the court dispositively quoted the Yeckel rule for denial of the right to the prescriptive road easement. That significant case, invoking a long-continued historical access, use and availability, had some singular interest of this writer as counsel for the denied appellant. Consistency and stare decisis do now seem to have some attributable virtue.