When you make a sizeable investment, isn't the prudent thing to do to find out everything you need to do to safeguard that investment? I think so, and that comes not from my attorney background but from my business background. If you are a business person or investor, and you don't know all the laws that affect your investment, you take a risk that some bad will happen due to that lack knowledge. This is just a basic principle of business and investing: what you don't know can hurt you. If you make a major investment of any kind and don't do the work to find out the rules that apply to it, IMO that's on you. Business people and investors are assumed in the law to be saavy and knowledgeable about their financial activities. That's precisely why they get less protection under the law than consumers do. They get more freedom to structure their business deals in exchange for less of the state "protecting" them. By and large that benefits them, but to get that, they have to take on the burden of actually knowing the rules that apply to their investments. If they don't know it, they consult people who do. That's the way things have been for centuries, and I see no reason to suddenly give those people more nanny like protection. I'll say it again: if they aren't willing to do the very minimum needed to protect their property, why should the government do it for them? I mean, it's not like it's hard to do, or that a consultation with a lawyer or real estate experit to find that out is all that expensive. It just takes a little effort for the investor to think the following: "what all do I have to do to protect my property and what do I need to do find that out?" Too many people think they know more about finance, investing, and the law than they really do, and they end up sometimes taking it on the chin as a result. It's a bit like getting behind the wheel of a car and getting on the highway. If you don't understand how the car works and the rules of the road, you risk getting yourself or others killed. If it was somehow real hard for landowners to get the information they need, I'd be more sympathetic. The problem isn't that it's a great burden on them to do it. The problem is that they just don't think about doing it in the first place. And IMO, that's on them. We don't need government to hand hold us on everything to protect us from our own mistakes.
Taxing Matters, Thank you so much for your insightful post. You nailed it. We wanted to comment on how the foundations of California real estate law, is rooted in old English common law. It might seem politically incorrect these days to an urban dweller, that it is important to keep land productive and healthy, rather than leaving it in its "pristine" condition. But a few hundred years ago in Europe, it was critical that rich, arable farm land was actually farmed, to provide food for a starving population. It was critical for lush green pastures to be grazed by livestock, to provide food for people. It was critical for lakes and streams to be fished, to feed the people. As quincy pointed out, it was critical for hunting grounds to be hunted, to provide food, or the game would overpopulate, starve, die, and would spread disease. It was also critical to mange woodlands responsibly to provide firewood, and lumber for building and heating their homes. Rich, noble land “owners” who left their fields fallow, and never bothered to even check on their property, were deemed to “not need it”, and so the rights to farm, fish, walk, or ride across, and otherwise use the land was often granted to those that needed to, provided, as you say sufficient time had passed. That period of time was “prescribed” by the courts, and after such time had passed, the use ripened into an easement. Hence the term, prescriptive easement.
quincy, Absolutely 1000% correct. Thank you!
Nothing wrong with that. And if the owner does the minimal amount of work to keep others from making continual use of the property, that owner is entitled to let it sit and sell it for that anticipated profit years later. The mistake is not keeping an eye on the investment, same mistake as never checking your stock portfolio, your idle bank account, or any other asset.
I don’t see any legal action that you have to pursue against C, D, or E. C was not and is not required to do anything for you. He owned property and he sold the property. The conditions of the sale are between him and F.
You are not the victim of fraud. F might be, depending on what he was told (or not told) about the easement.
If there was fraud, it wasn't against you. Therefore, none of those elements apply to you. And no, a prescriptive easement isn't quasi-ownership and never will be. Any kind of easement is the right to use a property for a specific purpose. That never confers ownership rights, even on a quasi basis. You are mixing adverse possession with prescriptive easement.