Pinkerton v. Salyers, Case No. 13CA3388
| Decision Date | 29 January 2015 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 13CA3388 |
| Parties | DAVID PINKERTON, Plaintiff-Appellee/Cross-Appellant, v. JOHN L. SALYERS, JR., ET AL., Defendants-Appellants Cross-Appellees. |
| Court | Ohio Court of Appeals |
DECISION AND JUDGMENT ENTRY
APPEARANCES:
William S. Cole, Cole, Kirby & Associates, L.L.C., Jackson, Ohio, for appellants/cross-appellees.
Thomas M. Spetnagel, Law Offices of Thomas M. Spetnagel, Chillicothe, Ohio, for appellee/cross-appellant.
{¶1} David Pinkerton filed an action to quiet title in his property and for a judgment declaring that David A. Salyers, trustee, and others had no easement across his property to the Salyers' adjacent land. After the Salyers answered and counterclaimed, the trial court found that the Salyers had established a private easement by prescription and estoppel across Pinkerton's property. The trial court determined that the easement was 10-feet wide and that it was restricted to the Salyers' use for farming, hunting, and other agricultural purposes. The Salyers appealed from the trial court's limitations on the easement, and Pinkerton cross-appealed from the declaration of the easement.
{¶2} In Pinkerton's cross-appeal he asserts that the trial court erred in granting the Salyers a prescriptive easement because the Salyers failed to prove their use of the property was adverse. We reject Pinkerton's claim that the judgment is against the manifest weight of the evidence because the record contains evidence that the Salyers used the access road without permission from Pinkerton and his predecessors in interest. Under these circumstances, the trial court did not clearly lose its way and create such a manifest miscarriage of justice that its judgment must be reversed.
{¶3} In his second assignment of error Pinkerton contends that the judgment entitling the Salyers to an easement by estoppel is against the manifest weight of the evidence. Pinkerton's contention is meritless because Pinkerton's predecessors in interest permitted the Salyers to spend money to gravel the access without objection, thereby estopping Pinkerton from denying the easement.
{¶4} In their appeal the Salyers argue in their first assignment of error that the trial court erred in limiting their use of the easement solely for the historical purposes of hunting, farming, and agriculture. They claim that their use of the easement should be unlimited, as long as it is reasonable. However, prescriptive easements and easements by estoppel are disfavored because they result in forfeiture of land without compensation. Moreover, such an easement holder may not increase the burden upon the servient estate by engaging in a new and additional use of the easement. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in restricting the use of the easement to its primary historical uses for hunting, farming, and agricultural purposes.
{¶5} In their second assignment of error the Salyers claim that "the trial court erred by limiting the use of that easement to Defendants." However, the privateeasement necessarily includes the right of guests and invitees of the Salyers to reasonable use of the easement. Thus, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in limiting the easement.
{¶6} We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
{¶7} In 2010 Pinkerton purchased an 82.25-acre tract (82-acre tract) of real property on Mount Tabor Road in Huntington Township, Ross County, Ohio. David A. Salyers, trustee of the John L. Salyers, Jr. and Alma L. Salyers revocable living trusts, has owned the 46.191-acre tract (46-acre tract) of real property since his parents, the trust beneficiaries, transferred it to him in 1998. The Salyers' property is adjacent to and northwest of Pinkerton's property, which abuts Mount Tabor Road.
{¶8} In March 2012, Pinkerton filed a complaint in the Ross County Court of Common Pleas against the Salyers. He requested that the court quiet title to his property by declaring that the Salyers had no interest in his 82-acre property, including any claimed right-of-way across his property to access their 46-acre tract. He also sought damages for the Salyers' trespass on his property relating to their installation of a gate and posting of signs for their use of the right-of-way. In their counterclaim the Salyers alleged that they had an easement by prescription, an implied easement, an easement by necessity, and an easement by estoppel over Pinkerton's property. They requested a court order establishing their right to cross Pinkerton's property and permanently enjoining Pinkerton from obstructing their access. A bench trial produced the evidence that follows.
{¶9} John L. Salyers, Jr.'s parents purchased the property, as well as a neighboring 52-acre tract that abutted Mount Tabor Road, in 1939. According to Salyers they purchased the property from the Walkers, who showed him and his father the access road from Mount Tabor Road across the 82-acre tract to their 46-acre tract. He noted that "[w]hen we bought the place, the people sa[id] this is the right [of] way to that piece of property." But he did not dispute that the record showed his parents bought the property from the Moores, not the Walkers. He did not agree that someone who owned the property before Pinkerton specifically gave him permission to use the access road; instead, he testified that "since nobody stopped me I had permission."
{¶10} The Salyers and their invitees, including friends, neighbors, and workers, have used the path from Mount Tabor Road across Pinkerton's property to the 46-acre tract since John Salyers, Jr.'s parents purchased it in 1939. This stopped when Pinkerton precluded them from doing so in 2012. The Salyers and their invitees have used the right-of-way across the Pinkerton property to get to their property by horses, four-wheelers, tractors, trucks, campers, and walking, primarily for farming and hunting. Although John Salyers, Jr.'s parents attempted to transfer the 46-acre tract to him in 1945 and the adjacent 52-acre tract to his nephew George in 1964, the attached deeds were mistakenly switched. Nevertheless, during this period, John Salyers, Jr. controlled the 46-acre tract, maintained it, and paid taxes on it. The mistake was eventually corrected in 1990, when the appropriate deeds were given to him and his nephew.
{¶11} John Salyers, Jr. maintained the roadway by mowing it and spending $1,400 to gravel it before Mead bought the Pinkerton property in 1986. A title search of the parties' properties revealed no express written easement from Pinkerton or hispredecessors to the Salyers or their predecessors. However, aerial photographs confirmed the existence of the right-of-way across the Pinkerton property from Mount Tabor Road to the Salyers' 46-acre tract as far back as 1938 and continuing through 2011. Neighbor Alvin Wade noted that the roadway was apparent 30 years ago. And according to neighbor Matt Hopkins, he could access the Salyers' property by driving his tractor over the roadway across Pinkerton's property without any trouble because the road had a "hard bottom" on it. Neighbor Dean Arrowood described it as a "pretty good road."
{¶12} In 1986, when Mead purchased the Pinkerton property for forestry operations, it contacted John Salyers, Jr. to ask him for his permission to put posts and a cable across the right-of-way. John Salyers, Jr. used a lock for the cable to access the right-of-way. For the last 26 years, the Salyers have not actively farmed their 46-acre tract because it is in the Conservation Reserve Program, a government set-aside program that requires him to mow the field every half-year. They still hunt on their property and maintain food plots for the deer. When Pinkerton bought the 82-acre tract in 2010, both he and the Salyers had their own locks and either could let the cable down to access the right-of-way to the Salyers' 46-acre tract. In 2011, Pinkerton told John Salyers, Jr. that he and neighbor Dennis Garman could use the roadway to get to the Salyers' field and hunt, but in 2012, Pinkerton denied the Salyers access to the road. Without use of the right-of-way across Pinkerton's property, the Salyers cannot access their 46-acre property. No one had ever stopped the Salyers and their invitees from using the road until Pinkerton did in 2012.
{¶13} After some procedural wrangling, the trial court entered judgment finding that the Salyers had established a private easement by prescription and estoppel across Pinkerton's property to theirs. The trial court also determined that the easement was 10-feet wide from Mount Tabor Road to the Salyers' tract, restricted the easement to the Salyers' private use and limited it to farming, hunting and other agricultural purposes only. This appeal and cross-appeal followed.
{¶14} In their appeal, the Salyers assign the following errors:
{¶15} In his cross-appeal, Pinkerton assigns the following errors:
{¶16} "An easement is 'the grant of a use on the land of another.' " State ex rel. Wasserman v. Fremont, 140 Ohio St.3d 471, 2014-Ohio-2962, 20 N.E.2d 664, ¶ 28, quoting Alban v. R.K. Co., 15 Ohio St.2d 229, 231-232, 239 N.E.2d 22 (1968). This appeal involves "easements appurtenant," which are "easements that typically benefit and/or burden two separate parcels of land, i.e., the dominant tenement (the land benefited) and the servient tenement (the land encumbered by the easement)....
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