Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

It is a little bit difficult to answer your question because it is not clear what you mean by "owner" of the easement, and therefore who you, the "owner" and the other neighbor are in legal terms. In legal terms no one "owns" an easement. You either own the "dominant tenement" or the "servient tenement." The easement is for the benefit of the dominant tenement, and exists within and is a burden on the servient tenement. So if you own land that has a driveway over it that goes to your neighbor's property, you own the servient tenement and they own the dominant tenement. It sounds like you may be referring to the owner of the servient tenement as the "owner of the easement." If so, it is not clear whether he would have a claim for reimbursement or not. Generally the owner of a servient tenement has no obligation to maintain the easment for the benefit of the owners of the dominant tenement(s). However, a person who improves the real property of another under a good faith belief that he is obligated to do so, can sometimes claim reimbursement for the reasonable value of the improvement. This is based on the idea that the other party should not get a free ride on another person's honest and good faith mistake. The person who makes the mistake, however, does not automatically get reimbursement or full reimbursement. The court must look at the total situation and decide whether under all the facts and circumstaces it would be fair to order a reimbursement and in what amount. Now, on the other hand, if you mean the "owner of the easement" is the owner of the dominant tenement, then the answer is easy. The owner of the dominant tenement is entirely responsible for maintaining the easement. He is improving his own property interest when he repairs or improves it, so there is no equitable argument that the servient tenement owners are unjustly enriched.

Civil Code section 845 addresses maintenance of easements "in the nature of a private right-of-way." The Code refers to the holder or benefitted party as the "owner" of the easement. The owner of the easement is NOT the owner of the land on which the easement is situated! This is an important distinction to keep in mind.

Absent a private agreement to the contrary, the Code imposes the following maintenance duties: If the easement is owned by one person, that person shall maintain it is repair. If the easement is owned by two or more persons, or benefits parcels of land under different ownership, the cost of maintaining it in repair shall be shared by each owner or each benefitted parcel in accordance with any agreement between those persons. In the absence of an agreement, the cost of maintenance shall be shared in proportion to the use made of the easement. Civil Code sections 845, subsections (a), (b) and (c).

The Code does not mention any need for prior consultation among the co-owners (co-users; co-beneficiaries) of the easement. Although judges would certainly prefer agreement as to how, when, by whom and to what extent repairs will be made, they are not legally necessary and a court should enforce any claim by an owner who has paid for repairs against the other owners who have not paid, provided the paying owner's actions were reasonable and appropriate in the circumstances. If one owner gold-plates the easment, the court would find that unreasonable and not award the excess expenditure against the other owners.

A landowner across whose land an easement runs, but who is burdened rather than benefitted by the easement, does not have to contribute to the maintenance. If the landowner also benefits from use of the easement as well as the easement owners, courts are divided but in the absence of an agreement in the easement grant, most judges would include the landowner among the users of the easement and require them to pay a proportionate share based on use.

The proportioning of the cost to maintain a roadway easement would usually reflect both the number of trips, the size and type of vehicle, and the relative length of the trips. Therefore, an owner of heavy trucks at the far end of the easement roadway should pay much more than a guy who occasionally rides a bike over only a short portion.