Easement case a living history.

It is not very often that a law suit between adjoining land owners requires an analysis of land records going back to the 17th century. A recent case in Suffolk County, Breakers Motel, Inc. et al. v Sunbeach Montauk Two Inc. (New York Law Journal, March 23, 1994 pg. 28, col. 5) is just such a case.

The Breakers is a motel in Montauk, New York situated immediately to the north of Old Montauk Highway. Also on the same side of the road, not far away, are other landowners including Atlantic Bluffs Club, Inc., a cooperative. To the south of Montauk Highway is a 43 acre stretch of undeveloped property on the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean owned by Sunbeach Montauk Two Inc. and called the "Benson Reservation." There are foot paths located throughout this land which lead to the beaches. These foot paths are used for the most part by the motel guests of the Breakers as well as the residents and occupants of the cooperative apartments at Atlantic Bluffs Club and other property owners along the north side of the highway.

A few years ago, Sunbeach decided to demonstrate its control over its property by erecting fences in an effort to inhibit travel on the foot paths to the ocean beach. This precipitated a law suit commenced by Breakers Motel and others against Sunbeach to enforce a claimed right to common use of the Benson Reservation and to permanently enjoin Sunbeach from interfering with the common use and access over the Reservation.

The issue before Justice William L. Underwood Jr. of the Suffolk County Supreme Court was whether this Reservation was encumbered by an easement in favor of members of the property owners north of the highway giving them access over the Reservation property.

Justice Underwood found it important to trace the history of this property in order to arrive at his decision. The property involved had been an area within the exclusive domain of Wyandanch, the sovereign of the Montauks and several other Algonquin Indian tribes. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the entire Montauk area passed into the hands of "proprietors" - a group of East Hampton men who collectively exercised ownership of this property. In 1879, one of these proprietors brought an action in partition against the other owners which ultimately resulted in a Referee sale of all of Montauk "more or less, subject to the Montauk tribe of Indians...". The purchaser at the 1879 Referee sale was a Mr. Arthur Benson of Brooklyn (Bensonhurst).

After Mr. Benson's death, this Montauk parcel (the Benson Reservation) was bequeathed to his children and in 1904 the Benson heirs engaged the prestigious landscape architectural firm of Olmsted Brothers (Frederick Law Olmsted Brothers (Frederick Law Olmsted was one of the architects of New York City's Central Park), to prepare a plan for this property, which was filed in the land records as Map #496. Parcels of land were conveyed subsequent to the filing of this map. It is the words contained on this map and on the deeds conveying various parcels of property after the filing of the map, that gave rise to this law suit.

Long after map #496 was filed, in 1926 it was extinguished when the greater portion of this Montauk tract was conveyed to Montauk Beach Development Corp. and it was formally terminated by a Certificate of Abandonment filed by Montauk Beach Development Corp. in 1938.

Plaintiffs, Breakers Motel Inc., Atlantic Bluffs Club and other property owners contended that the filed Olmsted map and language in their deeds evidenced an express grant of easement over the Reservation land for the use of the Reservation for access to the beaches. The Sunbeach organization however, contended that it has title to this Reservation in fee simple, free and clear of any specific or implied easement in favor of the plaintiffs or any one else.

In considering these issues, the Court described its approach to the matter. Justice Underwood wrote that in a dispute where the facts are uncontroverted and where the intent of the parties can be discerned from the face of various deeds, maps and other writings, the Court will confine itself to the interpretation of the applicable law and will enforce the rights and duties which spring from the contracts at the time and place they were made.

The Court defined an easement as an interest in property which was created either expressly or impliedly from surrounding circumstances, by grant or agreement. The holder of an easement is granted the right to some benefit or control over the property of another. An easement may be granted in perpetuity. A covenant which limits the use of land for the benefit of another parcel of land is referred to as a negative easement. Their existence will be resolved by determining the intent of the Benson heirs when they caused the filing of certain deeds and the Olmsted map. If it is found that such an easement was created, it would remain forever and nothing that happened subsequent would warrant the extinguishment of that easement. Conversely, if an easement was not created at that point in time, the events which occurred subsequent would not create such an easement.

The plaintiffs' acknowledged that their respective deeds do not contain identical language with regard to easements. They claim however that some property owners have deeds which provide expressed grants of easements uninterrupted in their chain of title from the Benson heirs. Others claim they have implied grants of easements in their favor by virtue of the Olmsted map. They are holders of property benefitted by a negative easement created by restrictions which burden the Reservation property.

The Court ruled that all of the plaintiffs as well as the general public have the right of access over the Reservation land to the beaches because easements in their favor were established by the Olmsted Map 3496 when it was filed. The fact that the map was later abandoned does not have any significance since the easements were already in place when the map was filed and those easements could not be eliminated by any act of the servient estate (the burdened property). The judge ruled that as a general rule the courts favor the free and unencumbered use of property by its owner and that the party seeking to enforce a restriction on that use (here the plaintiffs who are seeking to enforce an easement over the property) must prove by clear and convincing evidence the existence of such restriction (the easement). In this case, its clear from the language contained in several of the deeds that "a general right of way hereby reserved, in ...common with all grantees... a right of way over... the land known as the 'Reservations. " It is irrelevant that some of these deeds do not contain a full recitation of such easement. The deeds which are silent on the issue of the Reservations also state that the land is conveyed subject to all rights previously conveyed. This means that the easements which were cited in previous deeds in the chain of map title also benefit the current owners of those properties.

The Court found that the formal abandonment of map #496 in 1938 was ineffectual to extinguish the easement since the Certificate of Abandonment was for tax purposes exclusively and did not evidence the intention on the original owners (Benson) to abandon that easement. In addition, any proported abandonment would not be effective because an easement can only only be abandoned by the party holding the easement (in this case the owners of the plaintiffs' parcels). Thus, once the easement was created in the Olmsted map and in the specific language contained in many of the deeds, that easement remains in full force until such time as the owners of the parcels themselves decide to abandon those easements.

The court directed that the Sunbeach, as property owner of the Reservation property, remove any fences or structures on the Reservation and restore the Reservation property to its original open and natural state.