Maddock v. Higgins: Monuments v. Legal Description (Who Wins?) and Adverse Possession

In Maddock v. Higgins, the New Hampshire Supreme Court dealt with a complex property boundary dispute. The plaintiffs, Todd and Margaret Maddock, challenged a trial court decision in favor of the defendant Michael Higgins.

The parties owned adjacent parcels of land. In 2019, a surveyor plotted the boundary lines of the plaintiffs’ property, producing a survey that resembled the deeded descriptions and a plan that depicted a mathematically reconstructed boundary, which placed certain parts of the plaintiffs’ driveway and the parking area on the defendant’s side of the boundary. The survey also documented two monuments on the property, although neither the map of the development nor the deeds of the properties referred to these monuments.

The plaintiffs asserted that their property extended to a line between the two monuments, while the defendant claimed that his property extended to the mathematically reconstructed boundary. Between the two lines asserted by the party were parts of the plaintiffs’ driveway, a parking area, and a shed—what the Court called the “Disputed Area.”

The Ramsdells, the previous owners of the defendant’s property, allowed the plaintiffs’ predecessors to use the driveway. The previous owners of the plaintiffs’ property filed multiple site plans with the town in which the Disputed Area was depicted as part of the plaintiffs’ property, and the Ramsdells never objected to the boundaries as depicted. The plaintiffs’ predecessors, in addition to using the driveway and the parking area, occasionally cleared debris from the Disputed Area. The Ramsdells intentionally refrained from cutting down trees in the Disputed Area at the request of the plaintiffs’ predecessors in an effort to be good neighbors. In 2010, the plaintiffs’ predecessors built a shed within the Disputed Area.

In 2019, after the survey, the defendant cut down several trees in the Disputed Area, and the plaintiffs subsequently filed suit, seeking to quiet title to the Disputed Area and asserting adverse possession, boundary by acquiescence, and a claim of trespass against the defendant.

First, the Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the monuments established the boundary of the plaintiffs’ property, reasoning that the facts did not demonstrate that the parties understood the monuments to mark a boundary and that the deeded descriptions made no reference to the monuments.

Second, the Court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that they had acquired the Disputed Area by adverse possession, reasoning that the site plans filed by the previous owners of the plaintiffs’ property were insufficiently reliable to establish adverse possession under color of title and the occasional clearing of debris from the Disputed Area was not sufficiently “notorious” to provide notice of adverse possession. The Court also held that the plaintiffs’ use of the Disputed Area was insufficient to establish a boundary by acquiescence.

Third, the Court—disagreeing with the trial court—found that the plaintiffs’ use of the driveway and parking area was exclusive in nature and lasted more than twenty years, thereby meeting the requirements for adverse possession as to those portions of the Disputed Area. The Court rejected the defendant’s argument that the Ramsdells’ occasional entry into the driveway and parking area constituted ouster in order to defeat adverse possession.

Accordingly, the Court affirmed the trial court’s ruling that the plaintiffs did not establish ownership over the entirety of the Disputed Area, through the monuments, adverse possession, or boundary by acquiescence, but reversed the trial court’s ruling that the plaintiffs had not adversely possessed the driveway and parking area. The Court remanded for further proceedings.

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