No right to pave prescriptive easement in rural area

In a case that rests on neighborhood norms and prescriptive easement doctrine, the Massachusetts Land Court has held that while an easement owner can maintain an easement, the easement owner here could not pave the road even though the unpaved road had holes that made it difficult to drive and had damaged the easement owner's car. Unpaved roads were common to the area and desired by the owner of the servient estate and the easement had been obtained by prescription over the unpaved road. In effect, the court held that paving the road would exceed the uses the prescriptive easement owner had been making of the property. Ferris v. Bernstein, 2018 WL 6332991 (Mass. Land Ct. 2018).