Our former colleague and now Land Court Judge Robert Foster recently decided Neily v. Gray. That case concerns the rights of various owners in Lydia’s Island Road, a private way in Wareham leading to Onset Bay. Judge Foster determined that different owners had different rights in that way, depending on their chain of title.
In a satisfying win for Rackemann, the Appeals Court today upheld a Land Court decision that inland lot owners hold no easement rights over our clients’ waterfront property.
Loiselle v. Hickey concerns a large subdivision in Dennis with a number of ways leading to Cape Cod Bay. An earlier case between many of the same parties established that the inland lot owners had easement rights in all of those ways. In Loiselle, many of the same the inland lot owners argued that they also had the right to use the private beach between those ways for recreational purposes.
The Appeals Court rejected that claim. While the decision does not break new legal ground, it does serve as a helpful review of the basic legal principles governing waterfront land.
Massachusetts is unusual in that an owner of waterfront property typically holds title to the low water mark. However, the area between the low and the high water marks normally remains subject to the rights of the public to fish, fowl (hunt birds) and navigate.
Continue Reading Private Parties Cannot Enforce Public Rights to Access Tidelands
A Massachusetts appellate court has ruled for the first time that new land which accretes to registered waterfront land is treated as registered land automatically, without the registered landowner filing additional proceedings.
In Brown v. Kalicki, decided earlier this week, neighbors sought to establish an easement by prescription to use for recreational purposes a
In Taylor v. Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank Commission, the SJC considered the scope of the rights that the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank had under an easement that it held over the Outermost Inn property in Aquinnah owned by Hugh and Jeanne Taylor. The Taylors were represented by my colleague here at Rackemann, and
Earlier this month the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) issued an important decision in the case of Martin v. Simmons Properties, LLC. Mr. Martin holds an easement over the land of the defendant, Simmons. Simmons had blocked part of Martin’s easement.
Land in Massachusetts can be registered or unregistered. Registered land has some special protections not afforded to
In its 2012 decision in Cater v. Bednarek, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) upheld a Land Court decision that the plaintiffs’ easement had not been extinguished by abandonment or estoppel, even though it had not been cleared or used since its creation in 1899. However, the SJC remanded the case to the Land Court to consider whether it had been too restrictive in
It’s been a hot summer in the world of easement law. Our appellate courts have issued three decisions which, collectively, reinforce the following important lessons: (1) easements can be created by implication, (2) once created, most easements last forever unless extinguished, and (3) proving that an easement has been extinguished isn’t easy.
In mid-June, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) decided Cater v. Bednarek (pdf), in which it ruled
Last month the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) decided Cater v. Bednarek (pdf), an important case about easements and how they can – and can’t – be extinguished. The plaintiffs, the Caters, bought a vacant parcel of land in Truro that had the benefit of a right of way created by deed in 1899. That deed didn’t specify the location
Theoretically, owners of registered land are entitled to rely on the information contained in their certificates of title. To the chagrin of many, however, that is no longer the case. In its decision this week in Williams Bros. Inc. of Marshfield v. Peck (pdf), the Appeals Court affirmed a Land Court ruling that an appurtenant easement is extinguished when the dominant