The Court of Appeal has provided further guidance on the issue of prescriptive easements in the case of Hunsinger v. Carter. The case involved one party having uninterrupted use of a shared driveway over a 40 year period for commercial purposes, facing off against a neighbor who purchased the property last year and attempted to restrict his neighbours historic use of the property. The ‘new’ neighbor was operating a daycare and wanted to erect a fence in the middle of the shard driveway for reasons of safety.
On application, the court held that the ‘new’ neighbor could erect the fence, in part relying on the finding that the historic neigbour would be able to maneuver vehicles on their portion of the driveway and that the fence would not provide an absolute impediment to doing so. The application court judge found that the historic neighbor had established a prescriptive easement over the driveway as it was the dominant tenement for over 40 years before 2007 when both properties were registered in the Land Titles system. The appellant and his family had made use of the gravel driveway “openly, continuously, and without licence over this period. However, the application court judge found that the obstruction of the easement in erecting a fence was allowable because that portion of the driveway which was obstructed was not needed to be used by the historic neighbor.
The Court of Appeal disagreed, finding that building the fence would encroach on the easement. It is interesting to note that the Court did not disagree that the proposed fence did not prevent the historic neighbor from utilizing the driveway to access the back of his property. Rather it was clear that the court accepted the argument that the fence would substantially interfere with the neighbours use. Encroachment is only permissible where the encroachment does not substantially interfere with the easement and in this instance, the fence was thought to constitute a substantial interference.
