Butterfly Realty et al. v. James Romanella & Sons, Inc.
Annotate this CaseThe issue before the Supreme Court was a dispute over the existence of an alleged prescriptive easement that was necessary for large commercial vehicles to get to the loading dock of a commercial building. The plaintiffs, Butterfly Realty and Dairyland, Inc., appealed the judgment entered against them on their claims for a prescriptive easement on the property of the defendant, James Romanella & Sons, Inc. (JR & Sons). Butterfly Realty purchased a parcel of land from Albert Romanella, who, at the time, was president and 50 percent shareholder of JR & Sons. On that same date, Albert Romanella also assigned to Butterfly Realty his lease for an adjacent lot. Dairyland, Inc. was the owner of another adjacent parcel. Access to the loading dock at the rear of Butterfly’s building was impossible without crossing onto JR & Sons' property to some degree because the commercial building was built so close to the common property line between the lots in question. Therefore, JR & Sons granted an express easement to Butterfly to provide access to the loading dock of Butterfly’s commercial building. After a delivery truck struck a building on JR & Sons' property, JR & Sons surveyed the area in May 2010 to determine the precise location of the express easement. Then, in an effort to encourage Butterfly to "come to some kind of agreement for * * * using all of [its] property all the time, JR & Sons installed “concrete pylons" along the southwestern borders of the express easement making it nearly impossible for trucks to continue to pull directly up to the loading dock as had been done previously. The trial justice denied Butterfly's claim for a prescriptive easement and denied both Butterfly and JR& Sons' requests for injunctive relief. Upon review, the Supreme Court found that the trial justice misapplied the law with regard to Butterfly's use of the easement as "sufficiently hostile," and this misapplication sufficiently tainted the balance of the trial justice's decision. The Supreme Court vacated the superior court's judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings.
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