Easements

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Robert Hoyt v. Michael Benham

Case No: 12-1581

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Easements

Property owner with no access to his lot seeks right of access to lot from adjoining lots .

“Even if Hoyt had an easement, his use of the road would be limited to what it was when the easement was granted. An easement is granted on the basis of an understanding of what the owner of the easement will be allowed to do with it—and it hasn’t been shown that the understanding of what the owners of the western lot could do on the road in the southwestern lot included paving a road, as Hoyt wants to do. And much of the time the Strip was not a road at all, but just a strip of land on which a road might be (and eventually was) built. Now there’s a gravel road, and Hoyt wants to be able to drive an automobile over it. But there is nothing to suggest that he could have obtained an easement that would have allowed him to drive back and forth on the Strip between the West Burma Road and his lot when the Strip did not exist as a road, for he would have needed an easement that expressly allowed him to build a road on another person’s property.”

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.