## Facts

- Twelve ranchers operated as the Water Hollow Grazing Association and held Forest Service grazing permits for a national-forest allotment used to graze cattle.
- To access the allotment, the association annually moved cattle in spring and fall along a canyon route that crossed private land owned by Elliot and Wanda Crane.
- The route included a dirt road/trail on the defendants’ property leading from a highway toward the national forest boundary.
- The association and its predecessors had used the route for decades, beginning no later than the late 1940s, including after the defendants acquired the land.
- The claim was for a private easement to drive cattle, not for establishment of a public road.
- Conflict arose when the defendants attempted to control or restrict passage; the dispute centered on whether the association’s continued use was by right or by permission.

## Issues

1. Whether Utah law permits acquisition by prescription of an easement in gross (not appurtenant to a dominant estate).
2. Whether the association’s use of the route was adverse (under claim of right) rather than permissive.
3. Whether the use was continuous and uninterrupted for Utah’s twenty-year prescriptive period, including whether periods of use could be tacked among successive permit holders.
4. Whether any prescriptive easement recognized was commercial in character and therefore transferable with the grazing permits.

## Decision

- The Utah Supreme Court affirmed the decree recognizing an easement by prescription to drive cattle across the defendants’ land in the spring and fall.
- The court held that an easement in gross may be acquired by prescription under Utah law.
- The court concluded the use was open, notorious, adverse, and continuous for the required twenty years.
- The court approved tacking of use among successive permit holders/association members to satisfy the prescriptive period.
- The court characterized the easement as commercial and therefore transferable with the grazing-permit interest rather than purely personal to the then-current users.

## Legal Principles

- A prescriptive easement may be established by proof of open, notorious, adverse, and continuous use for the statutory period (twenty years in Utah).
- An easement in gross is legally cognizable and may arise by prescription even though it is not tied to ownership of a particular dominant parcel.
- Long-continued open and notorious use of a way, absent proof of permission, supports an inference (and presumption) that the use is under a claim of right.
- Continuity for prescription may be shown through tacking where successive users share a legally connected interest and the use remains substantially the same.
- Commercial easements in gross are transferable; a prescriptive right connected to profit-oriented operations (such as moving cattle to permitted grazing) may pass with the associated commercial interest.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a prescriptive, commercial easement in gross allowing seasonal cattle drives across private property, finding adverse and continuous use for twenty years and permitting tacking across successive grazing-permit holders, with the resulting easement transferable with the permit interest.


Crane v. Crane, 683 P.2d 1062 (Utah 1984)