Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: road easement

Because that's the American principle of attorney fees. For reasons lost in history, it has always been the rule in the U.S. that each party pays its own attorney, with numerous exceptions. In England, the rule is otherwise; the prevailing party is entitled to attorney fees.

The most important exception to the attorney fee rule is probably that parties to a contract may insert an attorney-fee provision into their contratc which says, in effect, "In any litigation over this contract, the prevailingparty shall recover its attorney fees." There is also a rule regarding attorney fees incurred to defend aganist losses from the tort of a third party, and attorney feel provisions are tucked into numerous statutes where the Legislature has decided to encourage litigation over the subject matter thereof.

By the way, the rules are different for court costs than with attorney fees. Prevailing parties are usually awarded their costs (such as filing fees and cost to serve process).

Now, the matter of producing documents to attempt to show or prove rights to do something, or to force the other side to show their documents and proof (or lack thereof) is a somewhat different concept, and falls under the heading of discovery. After civil litigation is commenced, each party has the right to demand documents, admissions, responses to questions, and submission to deposition from the other party.

After each side thus becomes acquainted with the strengths and weaknesses of its own case and the other parties' cases, the judge of jury will have an opportunity to decide who prevails. Please note that neither the judge nor the jury will know "who has documented rights" and who cannot "produce anything" until the evidence has been presented.

By the way, it would be entirely possible to include an attorney fee provision in a grant or reservation of an easement. Your dispute seems to relate to an easement. Perhaps it woulkd be worth your while to see whether the instrument creating the easement contains an attorney fee provision. That would be unusual, but it isn't impossible.