Mimbres Hot Springs Ranch, Inc. v. Vargas

534 P.3d 216

MIMBRES HOT SPRINGS RANCH, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.David VARGAS and Deborah Vargas, Defendants-Appellants.

No. A-1-CA-39046

Court of Appeals of New Mexico.

Filing Date: March 20, 2023

Certiorari Denied, June 27, 2023, No. S-1-SC-39885

Douglas C. Littlejohn, Silver City, NM, for Appellee

Lopez, Dietzel, & Perkins, P.C., William Perkins, Silver City, NM, for Appellants

HENDERSON, Judge.

{1} David and Deborah Vargas (Defendants) appeal from summary judgment in favor of Mimbres Hot Springs Ranch, Inc. (Plaintiff). The judgment required Defendants to remove a locked gate blocking vehicular access to Plaintiff's express easement over Defendants’ property. The judgment further permitted Plaintiff to modify and maintain the roadway that constitutes the easement, to better accommodate vehicular access. This appeal requires us to determine whether Defendants’ locked gate was sufficient to prescriptively extinguish Plaintiff's right to drive over the easement. We hold that an easement will be prescriptively extinguished, partially or completely, if the servient owner adversely uses the property in an open or notorious manner continuously for the prescriptive period. See Restatement (Third) of Prop.: Servitudes § 7.7 (2000). However, because Defendants’ use of the easement was not sufficiently adverse, Plaintiff's easement was not prescriptively extinguished.

BACKGROUND

{2} Neither party disputes any of the relevant facts. Plaintiff's property is comprised of an eastern and western parcel, divided in two by a creek. In 1981, a third party who owned property abutting Plaintiff's western parcel granted Plaintiff an express easement, twenty feet in width, for ingress and egress. The easement, which consists of an old road, allows Plaintiff to access its western parcel without needing to cross the creek, which tends to flood during monsoon season.

{3} In 1993, Defendants purchased the property from the third party, subject to Plaintiff's easement. When Defendants bought their property, there was already an existing locked wire gate, and even though that gate crossed the easement, they acknowledged Plaintiff had the right to drive over the easement. Soon after, Defendants replaced the locked wire gate with a locked metal tube gate across the easement. The gate is fenced on both sides, and is near, but not on, the parties’ shared property line, which is unfenced. The gate has remained locked since it was first installed, and prevents any vehicular traffic from traveling the full length of Plaintiff's easement. Plaintiff had at one time driven over the easement prior to Defendants buying the property, but never after that point. Despite the gate, Plaintiff's individual members still used the easement for walking, hiking, and occasionally surveying the property, by going around the gate and adjoining fence.

{4} Plaintiff knew it could not drive past the gate but did not immediately ask that the gate be opened or removed. This is because the gate also benefitted Plaintiff by reducing traffic over its property, traffic that could potentially harm the natural landscape Plaintiff wanted to preserve. However, around 2015 Plaintiff sought to build a house on its western parcel. It asked Defendants to remove the gate so that it could improve the easement into a road that could be driven on more easily. Defendants denied Plaintiff's request and told Plaintiff in two separate letters that its easement was "not valid, due to non-use." Defendants threatened that if Plaintiff continued to use the easement they would take legal action.

{5} Plaintiff beat Defendants to it. Two years after Defendants’ second letter was sent, Plaintiff filed suit against Defendants, primarily for trespass. Plaintiff sought a declaration of its rights and to quiet title to the easement, along with an order enjoining Defendants from blocking it. Defendants counterclaimed seeking to quiet title in their favor, alleging the easement had either been abandoned or prescriptively extinguished. After roughly two more years had passed, Plaintiff filed a motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff's motion took aim at Defendants’ counterclaim, arguing mainly that there was no evidence that Plaintiff intended to abandon its easement or that Defendants had adversely used the easement to extinguish it via prescription. Plaintiff also sought to establish that its easement, although expressly granted, was one of necessity not subject to abandonment or prescription.

{6} The district court granted the motion. It found that Plaintiff made no affirmative acts "which unequivocally showed an intent to abandon [its] easement." Because Plaintiff had an interest in keeping the gate, and because the gate did not prevent Plaintiff's members from using the easement for "recreational purposes" other than driving, the district court found that failing to drive over the easement or cut the lock did not demonstrate an intent to abandon. Finally, the district court found that "[t]here was a dearth of evidence to show" that the easement had been prescriptively extinguished. The district court did not rule on Plaintiff's necessity argument.

{7} Defendants appealed. Like those below, the arguments offered by the parties on appeal center on the legal effect of the undisputed facts. However, Defendants no longer press that Plaintiff's easement has been abandoned. Instead, their only argument on appeal is that the easement has been prescriptively extinguished because (1) the locked gate violated Plaintiff's easement rights, (2) Plaintiff knew its rights were being violated, yet did nothing to stop Defendants, and (3) the locked gate had been in place for well over ten years, the prescriptive period. Although they initially claimed that the entire easement was extinguished, Defendants have limited their argument to attack only Plaintiff's right to drive over it.

DISCUSSION

{8} Because the parties only dispute the legal effect of the underlying facts, we review the district court's legal conclusions on summary judgment de novo. Amethyst Land Co. v. Terhune , 2014-NMSC-015, ¶ 9, 326 P.3d 12. To resolve this appeal, we first discuss the law governing prescriptive extinguishment of easements. After explaining the necessary elements, we consider whether Defendants have met their burden of showing a genuine dispute exists as to each element so as to warrant a trial on the merits. See Horne v. Los Alamos Nat'l Sec., L.L.C. , 2013-NMSC-004, ¶ 15, 296 P.3d 478. ("Once the movant makes a prima facie showing [of entitlement to judgment as a matter of law], the party opposing summary judgment has the burden to demonstrate the existence of specific evidentiary facts which would require trial on the merits." (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). We conclude that they have not.

I. Prescriptive Extinguishment Jurisprudence

{9} The parties do not agree on the law that should govern this dispute. Defendants argue that Luevano v. Maestas , 1994-NMCA-051, ¶ 13, 117 N.M. 580, 874 P.2d 788, dictates when an easement is prescriptively extinguished. Defendants also cite to multiple cases from other states, as well as the Restatement (Third) of Property. In contrast, Plaintiff contends that Algermissen v. Sutin , resolves any dispute over when an easement is prescriptively extinguished. 2003-NMSC-001, 133 N.M. 50, 61 P.3d 176. And like Defendants, Plaintiff also suggests that we should follow various approaches from other states and treatises. Ultimately, we believe that neither Luevano nor Algermissen alone completely state the law governing when an easement is prescriptively extinguished.

{10} Luevano involved a dispute amongst neighbors, in which the plaintiffs sought to preclude use of a road that multiple properties abutted. 1994-NMCA-051, ¶¶ 5, 8-9, 117 N.M. 580, 874 P.2d 788. As part of their argument, the plaintiffs asserted that they had a greater right to the easement because it had been expressly granted to them, over any rights that may have been created through public use. Id. ¶ 12. In clarifying that even the plaintiffs’ express easement was vulnerable to interference, this Court explained that "[a]n easement appurtenant is subject to extinction by prescription of the estate to which the easement is appurtenant." Id. ¶ 13. This happens when a property owner whose property is burdened by the easement, the servient owner, uses their property in a way that is "adverse, and for the period of prescription, continuous and uninterrupted," to the easement owner's rights. Id. The whole of Leuvano ’s discussion of prescriptive extinguishment relied on Section 506 comment b of the Restatement (First) of Property (1944). See Luevano , 1994-NMCA-051, ¶ 13, 117 N.M. 580, 874 P.2d 788. Other than recognizing the basic concept, however, the Luevano Court had no occasion to apply the rule to the facts of the case. Luevano was instead resolved in favor of the defendants, who had created rights in the road. See id. ¶¶ 31-32.

{11} Beyond Luevano , New Mexico courts have not further addressed when an easement may be extinguished by prescription. And while it enunciated certain necessary elements for an easement to be extinguished by prescription, Luevano fails to offer any helpful analysis of them. In contrast, a significant number of cases have discussed the law concerning the creation of an easement by prescription. See, e.g. , Algermissen , 2003-NMSC-001, 133 N.M. 50, 61 P.3d 176 ; Segura v. Van Dien , 2015-NMCA-017, 344 P.3d 1009 ; Brannock v. Lotus Fund , 2016-NMCA-030, 367 P.3d 888 ; Ulibarri v. Jesionowski , 2023-NMCA-008, 523 P.3d 624. The modern statement of the elements necessary to create an easement by prescription were laid out in Algermissen : "[A]n easement by prescription is created by an adverse use of land, that is open or notorious, and continued without effective interruption for the prescriptive period (of ten years)." 2003-NMSC-001, ¶ 10, 133 N.M. 50, 61 P.3d 176 (citing Restatement (Third) of ...