Lord v. Sanchez

WOOD (Fred B.), J.

Defendants Anthony and Dolores Sanchez own a parcel of land which fronts upon a highway. Plaintiffs acquired by grant an easement 20 feet wide across the Sanchez parcel as a means of access to their adjoining and nearby lands but they use a roadway which embraces only 3 feet of that easement and includes an adjoining strip 15 feet wide.

The court found that the plaintiffs acquired an easement in the 20-foot strip by grant and in the 15-foot strip by prescription; concluded that plaintiffs have an easement for ingress and egress across said 35-foot right of way; and quieted their title thereto.

Defendants Sanchez have appealed, challenging the easement by prescription, not the easement by grant. They question the sufficiency of the findings to support the judgment and the sufficiency of the evidence to support the findings.

A finding that if defendants obstruct this 3 5-foot easement “plaintiffs would have no means of ingress and egress to their respective parcels of real property” is not, as claimed by defendants, a finding that the 15-foot strip is a way of necessity, and as such, a finding that is inconsistent with the finding that the easement in the 15-foot strip was acquired by prescription.

*

The 20-foot easement by grant was and

[706]

is available, though less convenient because of trees, shrubs and other obstructions upon it. Obstruction of both easements (the entire 35 feet of right of way) would be a quite different thing from obstruction of the 15-foot or the 20-foot strip only, leaving the other available for use.

Defendants claim the findings are fatally defective because of a failure expressly to find that plaintiffs’ use was “uninterrupted” and that plaintiffs’ claim of right was “communicated” to the defendants. Those, of course, are elements of proof in establishing a title by prescription. They are covered by a plea or a finding of “ownership” of a right of way in real property.

(Corea

v.

Higuera,

153 Cal. 451, 454-455 [95 P. 882, 17 L.R.A.N.S. 1018];