An acquaintance owns some property in Texas which they were refusing to sell. The developer who sought to acquire the land subsequently purchased all the surrounding land and is refusing her access to her property. Is this legal in general?
Standard disclaimers apply.
Thanks,
Rob
I doubt this is legal anywhere in the US.
See: Easement by necessity.
How was access made to the property prior? It had to some access, either public or an easement, and a developer wouldn’t normally be able to purchase either of those.
There is a section of land in Montgomery County, MD that has been having this problem. It seems that the county and state have removed an older road from the tax maps and refuse to give some people an address that gives them access to their land to be able to build.
Another link to the same story. I didn’t keep up with it much, but I do remember people saying they aren’t allowed to go to their own property.
Here is an anecdotal story from California. It’s not quite the same situation but I thought of it immediately.
My brother-in-law’s brother lives in Sonoma County. When they bought their property, they and a neighbor constructed a robust driveway for access. Many (>15) years passed.
Another parcel adjacent to theirs was carved out of some ranch and was purchased. The best access was to use this existing driveway and extend it another 300 feet or so. There was another way, but it would have been exceptionally expensive to construct and been circuitous and long. The new owners tried to negotiate an easement over the existing driveway but neither my family member nor the neighbor was having any of it.
Fast forward three years. The owners of the property finally made an offer for the easement that was accepted. So they have access, but it was never a done deal just because they had purchased the property.
A landlocked parcel is a classic Bar Exam question.
Basically, if access has been completely cut off with no other access point (even one that’s undesireable/inconvenient), you can sue for an easement by necessity. It’s a court action and the access over someone else’s land doesn’t arise spontaneously or automatically. There may be questions of equity (fairness) if the landlocked parcel had a chance to purchase an easement for a reasonable price and refused, or if there was never a customary right-of-way over the recently purchased property.
If they had access before, they very well may already have an easement by prescriptive right.
Google “easement of necessity Texas.”
The way I understand it is that they can’t refuse you access to your land, but they can charge you out the wazoo for the use of the easement of necessity.
That’s pretty similar to how you make your $$$ when someone else owns the mineral rights under it; you can’t refuse them access to the mineral rights, but you can charge exorbitant prices for access and for the land necessary to get at the minerals.
Doesn’t the word “reasonable” pop up in those circumstances? Many a lawyer’s retirement fund has been padded by the arguments over that definition of “reasonable”, but generally, it’s like porn - you know it when you see it.
Charging an unconscionable fee would IMHO IANAL be effectively blocking the access.
(Basically, IIRC, IANAL most places in Canada you cannot block or charge for access to your land for someone with mineral rights, they may have “reasonable” access and must repair any damage afterward. )
I work in real estate, no you cannot end up in a situation where your land is an island where you have no recourse. You can end up in a situation where your land is an island and it takes awhile and some court proceedings to get it worked out.
An example from personal experience (a friend’s property I assisted with), friend had bought acreage in a rural mountainous/wooded area for construction of a hunting cabin. There were two possible roadways from which access could have been made.
On one side of the property there was a public road that ran up to a gas company road that ran up to a natural gas well on a person’s property, then stopped. This road had a gate that was kept locked shut except when the gas company was using it, this road could have been extended a tad and made unlocked and it would’ve connected to my friend’s property.
On the other side there was another public road, from which a private drive could have been constructed connecting to my friend’s property, but it would require an easement over that property owner’s land. The old woman who owned the land with the gas well was not willing to negotiate at all, she was fine with gas company access since she got a royalty check out of it, but was not interested in any deals otherwise. The land owner on the other side was not willing to make any reasonable agreement.
This case dragged on for several years, one of the issues is that very early on the judge hearing it agreed that one of these landowners needed to give an easement to my friend, that was clear very early on. But, there was no agreement as to who should have to provide the easement. This was fought over for a very long time, eventually one of the land owners agreed to a more realistic accommodation, it ended up not being the old woman who already had a road on her property almost to my friend’s property, but instead the man who owned the other parcel. I’m not sure how it would’ve been settled if they had carried it all the way legally.
And no, you can’t charge exorbitantly. That was at issue in my friend’s case. One property owner simply wanted no more roads on her land, and would not flex at all. The other wanted an exorbitant compensation, vastly more than the fair value of the easement in any open market analysis. If it’s something like a personal possession, like say a treasure piano, you’re allowed to demand whatever price you want, even if no one can or will pay it. But when it’s land, where there is a general right to easements of necessity, you cannot say, charge someone $300,000 for an easement that crosses a small strip of a parcel whose entire value is only, say $100,000.
An interesting case on Reddit’s LegalAdvice was a landowner in Minnesota that sold off their only access with the expectation that their neighbor would allow use of his driveway, but the neighbor said no. Things escalated with the landowner blocking the neighbors gate and then cops getting called, we don’t know how it turned out because the neighbor got a lawyer who told them to shut up.