Rudder v. Mamanasco Lake Park Ass'n, Inc.
| Decision Date | 21 February 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 25710.,25710. |
| Citation | 93 Conn.App. 759,890 A.2d 645 |
| Parties | Richard D. RUDDER et al. v. MAMANASCO LAKE PARK ASSOCIATION, INC., et al. |
| Court | Connecticut Court of Appeals |
Robert A. Fuller, Wilton, for the appellants (plaintiffs).
Patrick J. Walsh, with whom, on the brief, was Dawn L. Rudenko, New York City, for the appellees (defendants).
LAVERY, C.J., and McLACHLAN and PETERS, Js.*
The plaintiffs, Richard D. Rudder and Cynthia Rudder, appeal from the judgment of the trial court in favor of the defendants1 in this action claiming adverse possession and seeking to quiet title. The plaintiffs claim on appeal that the court improperly (1) declined to construe easement language in the deeds of some of the individual defendants, which were submitted into evidence at trial, (2) failed to find that the individual defendants did not have easement rights over the disputed area, (3) applied an improper standard of proof to the plaintiffs' adverse possession claim, (4) found that the plaintiffs failed to prove adverse possession against either the defendant Mamanasco Lake Park Association, Inc. (association), or the individual defendants and (5) found that the plaintiffs' failure to enclose fully the disputed area defeated their claim of adverse possession. We disagree with each of those claims and affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The following facts, which either were found by the court or were not disputed, and procedural history are relevant to the issues on appeal. The parties are owners of properties within a twenty-two lot2 subdivision in the town of Ridgefield and the neighborhood association comprised of those owners. The subdivision lots are accessible from a town road by two parallel roadways running east and west, Lisa Lane and Christopher Road, and a strip known, on the basis of its width, as the twenty-eight foot passway (passway), which may be accessed from the western end of Christopher Road via a short connector. The passway, which is roughly perpendicular to Christopher Road, runs generally north and south and is bordered by several of the subdivision lots, one of which is a community recreation area. The lots along the western side of the passway, which include the recreation area and the plaintiffs' property, are bordered to the west by Mamanasco Lake. The eastern border of the plaintiffs' property is the northern end of the passway. It is the northernmost 140 feet of the passway (disputed area) that is the subject of the plaintiffs' action.
The entire western side of the disputed area borders on the plaintiffs' property, although the plaintiffs' property extends farther south than the southern end of the disputed area. The northern end and part of the eastern side of the disputed area border on property outside of the subdivision that is owned by a religious organization. The remainder of the eastern side of the disputed area borders on the lot owned by individual defendants Ken L. Dolan and Margaret E. Connaghan. The southern end of the disputed area borders on the remainder of the passway. Most of the passway is paved, although for only twenty feet of its twenty-eight foot width. The pavement ends, however, just south of the disputed area.
The disputed area, during the relevant period of time, may be described as follows. At its southern end, just north of the end of the paved portion of the passway, is a bed of pachysandra fronted by some railroad ties. Just north of the pachysandra is a split rail fence. The fence and the pachysandra bed each are about twenty feet wide and, thus, do not span the entire width of the passway. About one foot of the width of the passway lies to the west of the fence and pachysandra bed, and about seven feet of the width of the passway lie to their east. There is a drain in the passway, near the end of the paved portion and the eastern side of the split rail fence. Just north of the split rail fence are two shrubs and on either end are large planter pots. The majority of the remainder of the disputed area to the north is wooded,3 although a portion of it, comprising roughly its southwest quadrant, is encroached on by the edge of the plaintiffs' lawn, some plantings and a drainage ditch.
The plaintiffs purchased their property in 1984. During their subsequent time there, they maintained the pachysandra bed, split rail fence and lawn, all of which predated their arrival, and added the plantings and shrubbery. Around 1990, they installed a deer fence along the northern end of the disputed area and part of its eastern border. In 1999, they replaced the deer fence with a taller one that extended farther along the eastern border. Also around that time, they replaced the split rail fence with a much more substantial wooden fence that was eight feet high. The new fence extended across the entire passway and farther westward onto the plaintiffs' property4 and, consequently, completely blocked access to the disputed area. The association thereafter commissioned a survey that revealed the disputed area to be association property. When subsequently requested by the association to remove the fence, the plaintiffs, who had always believed that the disputed area was part of their property, admitted that they had been mistaken and offered to purchase it. The association was advised by an attorney that it could not sell the property, and this litigation followed.
In January, 2002, the plaintiffs filed a two count complaint against the association and its individual members. See footnote 1. In the first count, they claimed to have acquired from the association, via adverse possession, title to the disputed area.5 In the second count, which incorporated allegations from the first count, they averred that each of the individual defendants "may claim easement rights over the claimed area under deeds in their chain[s] of title," and that "[t]he defendants claim estates or interests in the land or parts thereof which are adverse to the title to the claimed area acquired by adverse possession by the plaintiffs."6 The plaintiffs requested, inter alia, a judgment establishing that they had acquired title to the disputed area by adverse possession and determining the rights of the parties in and to the area and settling the title thereto.
The defendants filed an answer and a two count counterclaim in which they asserted that the association was the record title owner of the disputed area and that the individual defendants had easements to use it. In their answer to the defendants' counterclaim, the plaintiffs, in response to the paragraph in the second count asserting that the individual defendants had easements to use the disputed area, replied: "It is admitted that the [d]efendants have easement rights over the claimed area7 in their deeds or chains of title, but otherwise [that paragraph] is denied because the [p]laintiffs claim ownership of the claimed area by adverse possession."
A trial to the court was held on October 29 through 31, 2003. In a March 1, 2004 memorandum of decision, the court denied the plaintiffs' adverse possession claim. Specifically, it concluded that the disputed area "was not of the character, in terms of its usage and nature, which would compel a court to hold that the plaintiffs adversely possessed it by clear and convincing evidence." It stated additionally that the plaintiffs' "`possession' cannot be deemed `adverse' enough, `exclusive' enough, `uninterrupted' enough, `hostile' enough, or `notorious' enough to oust any of the neighbors from their mutually shared deeded entitlement." The court considered the evidence presented insufficient "to establish the character of the plaintiffs' conduct to be opposed to the rights of the others and the association, and . . . inadequate as well to have apprised them of resistance to those rights." It also found that the plaintiffs' use of the disputed area was permissive.
On March 10, 2004, the plaintiffs filed a motion to reargue and for reconsideration and alteration of the judgment. Therein, they claimed that their complaint, in addition to claiming adverse possession, had challenged the existence of the individual defendants' easement rights as to the disputed area and, further, that "[t]he defendants also filed a counterclaim alleging easement rights over the disputed area which the plaintiffs have denied." Thus, the plaintiffs argued, the pleadings raised a material issue that the court did not address. According to the plaintiffs, their "legal position was and is that even if adverse possession was not proven against the record title owner, the [a]ssociation, that the individual defendants have no right to use the disputed area." The plaintiffs referred to portions of their posttrial brief in which they had argued that the individual defendants had no easement rights over the disputed area, either express or implied. Additionally, they requested that the court reconsider its findings as to whether they had established the elements of adverse possession and as to the significance of the split rail fence. In their objection to the plaintiffs' motion, the defendants argued that the plaintiffs' claims regarding the existence of the easement rights were not pleaded or litigated and were beyond the scope of the case.
On May 12, 2004, the plaintiffs filed another postjudgment motion, captioned "request to amend complaint for the pleadings to conform to the evidence." Although the language of the proposed amendment is not altogether clear,8 the motion indicated that the plaintiffs sought to make it more apparent, retroactively, that they had been contesting whether the individual defendants' easement rights extended over the disputed area on the basis of the language in the deeds creating those rights. The defendants objected, noting that the motion...
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