Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Water runoff on road easement

My first question would be whether you've presented these issues to the owner, and if so, whether his response has shown any willingness to negotiate and cooperate or not. Without knowing the bargaining positions of the parties, it's hard to give well-rounded advice.

The second question would be whether you had or have any easement rights in the better road that you say he's closed. Generally speaking, the easement beneficiary's rights cannot unilaterally be abridged or the location changed once its location has been established by use or by written instrument.

The law on maintenance of easements is, as you seem to know, that the cost burden falls upon the user(s)in proportion to use or benefit (assuming the easement agreement doesn't specify otherwise, which it may). If the resort owner doesn't use the easement at all, he could not be tapped for ordinary maintenance. Further, if the road on the easement is poorly designed in the first place, so that a capital improvement such as ditches, culverts, raising the surface, etc. were necessary, the cost would again be the user's (or users') responsibility.

So, to the extent the water damage is due to design of the roadway on the easement or to natural runoff, I don't think you have any recourse to the resort owner. On the other hand, to the extent the problems are caused by his excessive or careless irrigation, you may very well have a case for requiring him to pay some of the maintenance costs.

The only other issue I see here is that of possible "overburden" of the easement. Most easements are created with a vague but not unlimited useage level in mind, so that, for example, an access easement for a single-family home is probably still valid when the home owner builds a granny unit, or starts operating a daycare, the easement might be overburdened and hence invalidated by using it for a 10-home subdivision or to access a rock quarry. I doubt that occasionally using it for an RV or a 40' trailer would be an overburden even if the original parties had in mind private, noncommercial use by passenger cars only, but the issue might be argued by the retired lawyer.

I see your ZIP code is only 40 digits lower than mine, so contact me if you'd like to talk this over with a local not-quite-yet retired lawyer.