Court Opinion

ID: 9834222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:24:15.599155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:12.854380
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellant earnestly and vigorously presses his motion for rehearing, contending that if the facts shown in this case do not establish á prescriptive right in the public, then no set of facts can establish such right. This writer was much impressed with this view upon oral presentation of the cause, and has been almost persuaded thereto upon rehearing. But we have become firmly settled in the conviction, expressed in the original opinion, that when the case made is tested by the decisions of the courts of Texas, the judgment must still be affirmed. We think this is not only the law of the case, but the justice of it, as well.
It is, true, as appellant contends, that the evidence shows the roadway in controversy has been used more than 10 years by appel-lee and his neighbors, including appellant, without any apparent restrictions as to the character or extent of that use. Appellee never objected to such use, which was open and known to him, of course. His neighbors used the road just as he did, and with apparently just as much freedom. So far as the record shows, the question of their right to use the road, with or without his permission, acquiescence, or objection, seems never to have been raised. No one asked permission of him to use the road, he expressed no objection, had no objection, to such use, and himself used it just as his neighbors did. He put in and maintained gates where the road entered and left his farm, and his neighbors and others using the road helped him maintain this bar to absolute free passage by themselves closing the gates after using them. No one ever claimed or asserted any right to the use of the road in derogation of appel-lee’s right to close it to public use when and if he chose to do so. The idea of adverse claim or right or user seems to have never occurred to any one except to appellee, who alone would be directly benefited by the opening of the road to public travel. The record would seem to warrant the inference that appellant alone is particularly interested in opening the road, which affords a short cut from one of his properties to another; that the general public would not be particularly benefited, and seem not to be particularly, if at all, interested in the project. There was absolutely no public user which was exclusive, or adverse or hostile in the sense that it was inconsistent with or exclusive of the individual rights of the owner. That user was not affirmatively or actively adverse or hostile to the rights of appellee, and there was nothing in the situation which would have put appellee on notice that his friendly sharing of the road with, his neighbors could or would be given the effect of converting that road into a public highway. As is said in 9 R. O. B. p. 776:
“Since prescription is founded upon the supposition of a grant, the use or possession on which it is founded must be adverse, or of a nature to indicate that it is claimed as a right and not the effect of indulgence or of any compact short of a grant. If the enjoyment is consistent with the right of the owner of the tenement, it confers no right in opposition to such *215ownership. ‘Adverse user’ is defined as such a use of the property as the owner himself would exercise, disregarding the claims of others entirely, asking permission from no one, and using the property under a claim of right.”
And in 29 O. J. § 9,. p. 377, it is said:
“Mere user of another’s land by the public as for a highway is insufficient of itself to establish a highway by prescription. The user must be adverse and hostile to the rights of the owner. A user by license or permission of the owner of the land sought to be impressed with a public easement of travel is not adverse, and affords -no basis for prescription, unless the landowner consents to the user of his land by the public as of right, in which case it is not necessary for the prescriptive term to elapse in order to vest title in the public. Permissive use has reference to the conduct of the landowner in acquiescing and consenting for the road to be traveled by the public, while adverse user imports an assertion of right, on the part of those traveling the road, hostile to that of the owner.”
These rules are followed in the Texas decisions, without exception coming to our notice, and we cite these authorities in addition to those cited in the original opinion: Ramthun v. Halfman, 58 Tex. 551; Worthington v. Wade, 82 Tex. 26, 17 S. W. 520; Tolbert v. McClellan (Tex. Civ. App.) 241 S. W. 206; Smith v. Lancaster (Tex. Civ. App.) 248 S. W. 472; Williams v. Kuykendall (Tex. Civ. App.) 151 S. W. 629; Heilbron v. St. Louis S. W. Ry. Co., 52 Tex. Civ. App. 575, 113 S. W. 610, 979; Cunningham v. San Saba Co., 1 Tex. Civ. App. 480, 20 S. W. 941; Callan v. Walters (Tex. Civ. App.) 190 S. W. 829. Appellant cites only the case of Yarborough v. Tolbert (Tex. Civ. App.) 282 S. W. 302, in support of his contentions; but that case is not deemed to be in point.
Appellants’ motion for rehearing must be overruled.