Hamrick v. Ward
Supreme Court of Texas, No. 12-0348 (August 29, 2014)
Justice Guzman (Opinion)
The Supreme Court of Texas clarified the law concerning implied easements by requiring a party to pursue a necessity easement—not a prior-use easement—to claim an implied easement for roadway access to a landlocked, previously unified parcel.
In 1953, two landlocked acres of a larger 41-acre parcel of land were deeded to a third party. At the time of the severance, a dirt road provided access between the public thoroughfare and the landlocked parcel. In 2004, the Wards purchased the two acres and continued to use the dirt road, as all previous owners had done. The Hamricks, who had purchased two lots in a development on the larger tract of land through which the dirt road ran, sued the Wards, and the trial court granted a temporary injunction preventing the Wards’ continued use of the dirt road. As a result, a paved driveway was constructed to connect the Wards’ land to a new public roadway. Nonetheless, the Wards also pursued a counterclaim against the Hamricks for an implied prior use easement with respect to the dirt road. They did not, however, assert a claim for an implied necessity easement.
The Court began its analysis by noting that for over 125 years Texas courts had distinguished between implied easements by way of necessity and implied easements by way of prior use, applying a higher burden of proof to necessity easements by requiring “strict and continued necessity” as opposed to a prior-use easement’s “reasonable necessity at severance” standard. The rationale, according to the Court, was that necessity easements typically involve substantial encumbrances, such as a road, whereas prior-use easements impose modest impositions on the servient estate, such as water, utility, and power lines.
A necessity easement is created when a grantor, in conveying a parcel of land, fails to expressly provide for a means of accessing it. Therefore, the Court reasoned, the law implies the existence of a roadway easement to allow continued access to the landlocked property. But when the necessity terminates, so does the easement. In contrast, a party asserting a prior-use easement does not need to establish “strict and continued necessity.” Instead, a prior-use easement only requires “reasonable necessity at the time of severance.”
The Court essentially carved out this specific type of property dispute from prior implied-easement law and ruled “that courts adjudicating implied easements for roadway access for previously unified, landlocked parcels must assess such cases under the necessity easement doctrine.” In doing so, the Court made clear that its ruling had no impact on one’s ability to pursue other types of prior-use easements, entailing more modest impositions, as they typically have been dealt with in the past. Because the Wards had not asserted a claim for a necessity easement, the Court remanded the case for further proceedings in light of this clarification of the law.
