While owners can generally get an easement by necessity to obtain access to landlocked land over remaining lands of the grantor, most states also recognize easements implied from visible, continuous prior use before the parcels were separated if the access is helpful ("reasonably necessary") to the dominant estate. The prior use doctrine rests on the right to reform a deed because of mutual mistake.
In one of the first important cases to gauge the consequences of the Supreme Court's physical takings decision in Cedar Point Nursery, the Court of Appeals Second Circuit, in two linked cases has upheld recent amendments to New York City's rent stabilization law against a claim that is a facially invalid violation of the takings clause applicable to the states through the fourteenth amendment....
In Jordan v. Parker, 2022 WL 17998227 (Tex. Dec. 30, 2022), the Texas Supreme Court held that a conveyance of a life estate actually conveyed a fee simple since the remainders were subject to alteration or even complete divestment by the life estate owner. In this case, a man devised his entire estate to his widow for life with remainders in their children, but the devise...
An appellate court in New Jersey held that a bank that received a mortgage on a piece of property was bound by a later-recorded homeowners association covenants because it had actual knowledge that the developer planned to subject the property to the declaration. Fulton Bank of N.J. v. Casa Eleganza, 473 N.J. Super. 387, 281 A.3d 252 (N.J. App. Div. 2022). This was the case even though New Jersey...
A couple that bought a home next to a golf course sued the golf course for trespass because of all the golf balls that landed on their property. Although the golf course attempted to take remedial measures to stop golf balls from landing on the couple’s property, roughly 90 balls would land on the property each year, a dozen of which struck the house. The couple won in the trial court which awarded them $100,000 in compensatory damages for property damage and $3.4...
The Massachusetts Land Court has ruled that a married couple that owned a 1/3 interest as tenants in common with other owners lost their interest by adverse possession to their cotenants because their predecessors in interest had failed to use the area after they were “ousted” by their cotenants....
The Massachusetts courts say that there is no duty to mitigate damages in commercial leases but they sure look like they recognize such a duty when a lease has an acceleration clause (requiring the full remaining rent for the rest of the lease to be paid if rent payments are missed). In the case of Cummings Props., LLC v. Hines, 2022 WL 17409280 (Mass. App. Ct. 2022), a commercial tenant...
The Mississippi Supreme Court has held that short term rental of property is not a commercial use that would violate a covenant limiting land to residential purposes. Lake Serene Prop. Owners Ass’n v. Esplin, 334 So.3d 1139 (Miss. 2022). There has been some disagreement among state courts on this question because the use of property as an Airbnb or other short term...