Property Law Developments—Joseph William Singer

When a taking of property by eminent domain to build a highway bifurcated a parcel, one part became landlocked but obtained access to a public road by permission over neighboring property. When that permission ended many years later and the parcel became landlocked the owner sought an easement by necessity over the neighbor’s land but the court found the traditional requirements for such an easement to be lacking. Since the parcel had not become landlocked when severed from the neighboring land there was no basis for imposing an obligation on that neighbor to create an easement for access to the roads. Nor did the owner obtain a prescriptive easement because access to the land had been by permission. No claim was made for a constructive trust or easement by estoppel, alternative theories that might have been relevant if the owner of the servient estate had induced the owner of the landlocked parcel to invest in reliance on the easement. The implication of the case may be that the owner should have received a greater amount of just compensation at the time of the exercise of the eminent domain power given the landlocked nature of the property. Clifton v. Wilkinson, 748 S.E.2d 372 (Va. 2013).