Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: easement use for criminal activity

I may have a potential solution for you if you want to send me an email and hear it.

Best,

Daniel Bakondi, Esq.

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Re: easement use for criminal activity

You have not duty to report the activity, but if you do will solve your easment issue. If they are in jail, no chance of keeping the easment. Also, you cannot revolk a perscriptive easment as it is granted by use not my agreement.

Re: easement use for criminal activity

Every easement, whether obtained by prescription, express grant, reservation, "necessity," etc. is subject to potential loss by what is called "overburden." This means the holder of the easement uses it substantially beyond the permissible purposes. In the case of a prescriptive easement, permissible purposes include those that caused it to arise in the first place, and maybe some modest additional use. For example, an easement for a driveway to reach a single-family home is probably not overburdened if their teenage son gets his own car, or if the family rents a room out to a boarder who has a car. On the other hand, if the single-family hours is torn down and replaced with an apartment house, a rock quarry or a strip mall, the traffic would be an overburden which could result in cancellation of the easement by operation of law.

I cannot express an opinion as to whether a court would vacate a prescriptive easement on an overburden theory based on repeated or customary use for a criminal activity, but it's distinct possibility. If I get a quiet moment today I'll research it and post a second answer if I find anything one way or the other in California cases.