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THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN PLAINTIFFS’ AND DEFENDANTS’ PROPERTIES RUNS THROUGH A DRIVEWAY, 10 FEET ON DEFENDANTS’ PROPERTY AND SEVEN FEET ON PLAINTIFFS’ PROPERTY; DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT DECLARING PLAINTIFFS DID NOT HAVE A PRESCRIPTIVE EASEMENT OVER THE DRIVEWAY SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED (SECOND DEPT).

The Second Department, reversing (modifying) Supreme Court, determined defendants’ motion for summary judgment declaring plaintiffs did not have a prescriptive easement over a driveway located on both parties’ properties (10 feet on defendants’ side and seven feet on plaintiffs’ side) should have been granted. Supreme Court should have considered the state of the property when the two lots were created from a single parcel in the 1920’s, not the driving habits of plaintiffs and defendants since they purchased the properties in the 1990’s:

“The party asserting an easement by necessity bears the burden of establishing by clear and convincing evidence that there was a unity and subsequent separation of title, . . . and that at the time of severance an easement over [the servient estate’s] property was absolutely necessary. Significantly, the necessity must exist in fact and not as a mere convenience and must be indispensable to the reasonable use for the adjacent property” … . The court determined that the defendants did not meet their prima facie burden because, in the court’s view, the record reflects that the plaintiffs could not drive their vehicles into and out of their garage without traversing the defendants’ property. … [T]he court erroneously focused on the claimed necessity as it is alleged to exist now. … [T]he relevant inquiry is whether the necessity existed at the time of severance … . … [T]he parties’ respective properties were created from one parcel of land in 1925 and 1926. Hence, the plaintiffs’ testimony as to their driving habits from when they first acquired the property in 1991 is irrelevant. In any event, in contrast to situations where severance of title renders a claimant’s property landlocked, courts have repeatedly rejected claims to an easement by necessity over a driveway where the “sole claimed ‘necessity’ for the easement is the ‘need’ to access off-street parking,” as “[t]hat purported need is nothing more than a mere convenience” … . Bolognese v Bantis, 2023 NY Slip Op 01771, Second Dept 4-5-23

Practice Point: Plaintiffs’ and defendants’ properties were created from a single parcel in the 1920’s. To determine whether a party has a prescriptive easement, one parcel has to be landlocked at the time of severance. Here the parties’ shared a driveway leading to their garages, part of the driveway was on plaintiffs’ property and part on defendants’ property. Plaintiffs regularly drove over a portion of defendants’ driveway to access their garage. Supreme Court should have considered only the state of the property in the 1920’s when the single parcel was divided into two. The parties’ driving habits were irrelevant. Therefore defendants were entitled to a declaration that plaintiffs did not have a prescriptive easement over the driveway.

 

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