Wilson v. Waters

Delaplaine, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The record in this case contains three appeals taken by Elsie Wilson from three judgments entered against ²²⁵ her in the Circuit Court for Howard County. The judgments were recovered by plaintiffs in three suits for damages for barricading a road over her land from plaintiffs’ four houses to Cissell Avenue in the village of North Laurel. Plaintiffs houses were built more than 75 years ago and are commonly known as “Four Block.” They are located on lot 42, which has a frontage of 50 feet on Cissell Avenue and a depth of 150 feet, as shown on the plat of the village.

Thomas M. Waters and wife own the northern house and also the adjoining house in which they live. Joseph M. Burley, Jr., and wife own and occupy the third house. The southern house is owned by Joseph, Kenneth and Samuel Burley, sons of Joseph M. Burley, Sr., who died in 1937. Defendant owns lot 43, situated south of lot 42.

Plaintiffs alleged in the three suits that for more than twenty years they had used the road along the northern line of defendant’s land as a means of access to the rear of their houses, but on April 15, 1946, defendant erected a fence along the northern line, and also a gate across the road at the intersection of Cissell Avenue, and locked the gate, and subsequently removed the gate and extended the fence across the road, thereby depriving them of its use. The three suits were consolidated and tried together. After the trial court denied defendant’s motions for directed verdicts, the jury awarded a verdict in favor of plaintiffs for the sum of $5 in each case. Plaintiffs did not claim an easement in the land by grant.

They claimed a right of way by prescription. It has always been the law in Maryland that no person who has a right of entry into any land shall enter there-into but within twenty years after his right of entry accrued. This rule was embodied in the Statute of 21 James I, ch. 16 enacted by Parliament in 1623. 2 Alexander’s British Statutes, Coe’s Ed., 599. It is now in force in Maryland by virtue of Article 5 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, which proclaims that the inhabitants of Maryland are entitled to the Common Láw of England and ²²⁶ also to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed on July 4, 1776, and which “have been found applicable to their local and other circumstances, and have been introduced, used and practiced by the Courts of Law or Equity.” Safe Deposit & Trust Co. of Baltimore v. Marburg, 110 Md. 410, 414 , 72 A. 839 .

But it is well settled that adverse possession sufficient to give marketable title to land must be open and notorious, continuous and exclusive. Gittings v. Moale, 21 Md. 135, 148 ; Peper v. Traeger, 152 Md. 174, 181 , 136 A. 537 . While the Statute of Limitations does not apply to adverse user of another’s land by mere enjoyment of an easement, nevertheless the statute applicable' to reentry into land has been made applicable by analogy to incorporeal rights. It is well established that to acquire an easement by prescription, the claimant must prove adverse, exclusive and continuous use for twenty years.

Waters v. Snouffer, 88 Md. 391 , 41 A. 785 ; Smith v. Shiebeck, 180 Md. 412, 419 , 24 A. 2d 795 ; Condry v. Laurie, 184 Md. 317 , 41 A. 2d 66 ; Punte v. Taylor, 189 Md. 102, 111 , 53 A. 2d 773, 777 . We recognize, however, that while adverse possession, sufficient to establish title in fee simple, must be absolutely exclusive, the user essential for establishing an easement is exclusive in the limited sense that the claimant’s right must not depend for its enjoyment upon a similar right in others, and, though claimant may not have been the only one who. used it, he used it under a claim of right independently of all others. Cox v. Forrest, 60 Md. 74, 80 ; 4 Tiffany, Real Property, 3d Ed., sec. 1199. In this case the testimony concerning the location and width of the road, which plaintiffs swore positively they had used more than twenty years, was sufficiently definite to warrant submission of the case to the jury.

Waters, age 74, testified that the road was there when he moved to “Four Block” 35 years ago, and that he had uséd it continuously until it was barricaded by defendant. Kenneth Burley, age 44, testified that there had been a dirt road there ever since he was “big enough to know.’! He ²²⁷ swore that he had used it ever since 1926, when he bought his first automobile. Elmer F. Warner, who had driven over the road to deliver feed, paint and other supplies from a store in Laurel, testified that the road was there when he started to school more than a quarter of a century ago.

He described the road as a country lane between 18 and 20 feet wide. Defendant’s main contention is that there was no legally sufficient evidence that plaintiffs’ use of the road was exclusive. She claims that when she bought her lot in 1934, it was unenclosed and unimproved, and that there was no road on the lot until one was made for hauling building materials when she built her house; and that any use of the road by plaintiffs was merely in connection with permissive use by the general public. It may be stated as a general rule that when a person has used a roadway over the land of another openly and continuously and without objection for twenty years, it will be presumed