Holbrook v. Taylor

Kentucky Supreme Court · 1976 · Property

PropertyEasementsLicensesEstoppelPrescriptioneasementroadwaylicense

Facts

Appellants owned unenclosed, hilly woodland over which a 10- to 12-foot-wide roadway about 250 feet long had been used since 1944 with their permission. Appellees bought an adjoining three-acre homesite in 1964, built a residence there in 1965, and used the roadway with appellants' actual consent or tacit approval to bring in workmen, machinery, materials, and supplies, to improve the premises, and to access the completed home. Appellees also widened the road, installed a culvert, and graveled part of it at a cost of about $100, and there was no other location over which a roadway could reasonably be built to provide an outlet. In 1970, after a dispute over a requested writing, appellants blocked the road with a steel cable and posted no-trespassing signs, prompting this suit.

Issue

Whether appellees acquired a right to use the roadway either by prescription or, alternatively, by estoppel. More specifically, whether a permissive roadway license became irrevocable after appellees relied on it in constructing and improving their home and the roadway.

Rule

A prescriptive easement requires open, peaceable, continuous use under a claim of right adverse to the owner, with the owner's knowledge and acquiescence, for 15 years. Separately, where a license is not a bare right of entry but includes use of land in the nature of an easement, and the licensee, with the licensor's knowledge, consent, or acquiescence, erects improvements or makes substantial expenditures in reliance on the license, the license becomes irrevocable and continues for so long a time as the nature of the license calls for; in effect, it becomes a grant through estoppel.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

In eastern Kentucky, Owen Mercer owned wooded land crossed by a dirt lane leading to Dana Ruiz's newly purchased hillside parcel. Owen told Dana she could use the lane to bring in contractors and materials for a cabin, watched as she spent thousands improving the lane with gravel and drainage pipe, and said nothing while she built the cabin; four years later, he locked a gate across the lane.

What is Dana's strongest claim to continue using the lane?

Explanation. The majority rule is that a permissive roadway license can become irrevocable when the licensee, with the licensor's knowledge, consent, or acquiescence, exercises the privilege and makes substantial expenditures or improvements in reliance on it. Prescription fails because the use is permissive and far short of 15 years of adverse use. The doctrine recognized is a grant through estoppel, not an implied easement.