Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California
I live in an apartment building in Los Angeles that shares a driveway with the apartment building next door. The driveway is wide enough on my side of the property line to enter and exit the driveway and the other side is not wide enough for a car to pass through at the street end. However their driveway widens along their side of their building. Tenants from the other building have been parking in that wider area essentially blocking their driveway so tenants from both building are forced to use my driveway.
Frequently the tenants from the other building and their guests park over the property line and block access to both halves of the driveway so no one from either building can enter or exit the driveway. This issue has been the cause of many arguements between all of the tenants in both buildings.
In one arguement I had my landlord come over to discuss the driveway issues. My landlord said that their was an agreement between both landlords that the driveway was NOT to be used for parking and only for access to designated parking spaces at the end of the driveway where there is a garage on their side and designated parking on mine, or for picking up and dropping off, NOT for everyday parking. Then the tenant from the other building stated that their landlord had sold spots on their half of the driveway along the side of their building as tenant parking spots.
To my knowledge there is no written easement, however I have not gone to the city registrars office to look at each deed, And the other buildings landlord will not communicate regarding this issue.
What are my rights regarding the driveway? How can I get them to stop blocking the driveway? Do they have the right to park on their half of the driveway and use our side for access to their garage?
1 Answer from Attorneys
First, whether or not there is a recorded, written but unrecorded, or merely prescriptive easement, it's about 97% liklely that a court would find one exists. I don't think lack of an easement is going to be a serious issue here.
Next, the dimensions of the easement may (or may not) be specified in a writing. Nevertheless, in In Scruby v. Vintage Grapevine, Inc. (1995), 37 Cal.App.4th 697, the Court of Appeal held that a nonexclusive easement for ingress and egress 52 feet in width did not give the owner of dominant tenement a right to exclude the owner of the servient tenement from all use of the entire 52-foot-wide easement. Indeed, the Scruby court held that the owner of the servient tenement gives up only so much of his rights in the land as was necessary to accommodate the purposes of the dominant tenement under the particular grant or reservation.
The "dominant tenement" is the property whose owner benefits from, and owns, the easement; the "servient tenement" is the property on which the easement lies and which is burdened by its presence. Here, both properties are dominant and servient with respect to some parts of the easement(s) here involved. There are reciprocal easements.
Your rights to use the easement derive from your landlord's, via your lease. However, under the Scruby decision, which probably would govern a decision on the parking issue, the landlord of the other building MAY have a right to use portions of the easement on his property, so long as the easement as a whole is not blocked so that it cannot be used for ingress and egress. This could include renting (selling is dobtful for other reasons) parking spaces. So, I'd be very cautious about saying than all parking on the easement is in violation of the easement users' rights.
Nevertheless, complete blockage of passage would be such a violation.
I would think that both landlords and most of the tenants of both buildings would be quite unhappy about complete blockage, and that suitable pressure could be brought to bear on anyone creating such a blockage. Appropriate warning signs, followed by towing, might be an appropriate remedy. I have not, however, made any recent checks into the laws regarding an easement holder's right to tow vehicles obstructing the easement.
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