Clemson v. Butler Aviation

Clemson v. Butler Aviation

Issue

The issue raised in this Clemson v. Butler Aviation case, whether a presumption of adverse use arises in favor of a person who uses a farm lane for ingress and egress to the residence which he or she first occupied as a minor and continues to occupy jointly with his or her parents so as to establish — as against the parents and their successors in title — a basis for a prescriptive easement, is a legal question involving the interpretation of Maryland case law as it relates to prescriptive easements. Therefore, we will review the issue de novo. The issue of whether traditional easement law applies to condominiums is a question of law, and thus, we review it de novo (md.findacase.com).

The term condominium may be defined generally as a system for providing separate ownership of individual units in multiple-aviation firm developments. In addition to the interest acquired in a particular apartment, each aviation firm owner also is a tenant in common in the underlying fee and in the spaces and building parts used in common by all the aviation firm owners (md.findacase.com).

Rule

The Court of Special Appeals contends that there is an inherent conflict created by such a grant of an easement in the context of a condominium. The court argues that because the individual condominium aviation firm owner is also a member of the Condominium aviation firm owners as a whole, she has an interest in "both the servient and dominant estate[s]." In other words, petitioner is granted an easement over or through the common elements as the dominant estate represented by her condominium aviation firm, but as a member of the Condominium she also has an interest in the servient estate by virtue of her interest in the common elements (md.findacase.com). The Court of Special Appeals finds this scenario to be distinguishable from the "traditional concept of easement, whereby one party obtains an easement for his or her benefit and another party must shoulder the obligations associated with that benefit." We find no conflict in this situation. While petitioner "can be said to have a tenancy in common in the general common elements with all of the other Condominium aviation firm owners," petitioner owns her individual condominium aviation firm in fee simple (md.findacase.com).

It is often said that hard cases make bad law. Occasionally, a court is faced with a situation in which the normal application of legal principles that are either well-established on their own or that would naturally flow from the objective interpretation of broader common law or statutory mandates will produce a result that the judges of the court feel is unduly harsh, or even unfair, to a litigant.

Application

The temptation arises not to apply those principles as the law would ordinarily require, and the judges, instead, look for some way to create a little bubble, or exception, to avoid the perceived harsh or unfair result. What often happens when they do that, of course, is that the law, itself, becomes ...