Easement vs. title by adverse possession

On Mar 26, 6:12 am, s...@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) wrote:

> Neighbor builds a shed on my land, over a utility easement.  I do
> nothing for several years, so neighbor gets an easement.

That's the mistaken assumption that leads to your conundrum.   Neighbor doesn't get an easement, he gets title to that portion of your land by adverse possession (assuming your hypothetical refers to his shed being there long enough for that to happen), but subject to the pre-existing easement.   IIRC Stu has already told us in a previous post that the reason it's nearly impossible to get "adverse possession" of an easement is that the easement survives any change in the fee ownership of the land it applies to.   You can't take away the utility's easement just by selling your property, and you also can't take it away by allowing your neighbor to get adverse possession of the portion of your land the easement covers.

> Then the
> utility company comes in, and demolishes the shed (at my expense?)

In your hypo, if the land the shed is on now belongs to your neighbor by adverse possession, the utility would bill your neighbor for the demolition cost.  He's the new owner.

> At that point, can I prevent neighbor from rebuilding the shed?

Not if he already has title thru adverse possession.   That land isn't yours anymore.   The tiff is between your neighbor and the utility and you have no say in it.

>  Or
> can they keep rebuilding it, only to have me billed for removing it by
> the utility?

No.  See above.   But it sounds like a great idea for "Sisyphus' Perpetual Motion Machine" if you could get it to work.

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