## Facts

- WBTSCC Limited Partnership and a trustee owned property in Rye, New Hampshire, largely operated as a golf course.
- A small gravel area at the northeastern corner of the property, known as Sanders Point, connected to Wentworth Road and to Little Harbor Beach via a narrow sandy footpath.
- For decades, members of the public used Sanders Point to park vehicles and access Little Harbor Beach, including for worm-digging and other recreational activities; use increased in the 1990s.
- The Town placed signs indicating beach access and setting parking-related restrictions (e.g., no overnight parking and limits on certain vehicles).
- Tensions arose between public use and golf-course operations; in 2012 the owners obstructed public access with boulders, vegetation, and fencing.
- A local resident sued, alleging the public had acquired a prescriptive easement for parking at Sanders Point and pedestrian access to the beach; the trial court agreed, defined the easement’s scope, and awarded attorney’s fees to the plaintiff.

## Issues

1. Whether the public acquired a prescriptive easement over Sanders Point and the footpath to Little Harbor Beach.
2. Whether the easement’s scope includes vehicular parking at Sanders Point as well as pedestrian travel to and from the beach, and what limits apply.
3. Whether attorney’s fees were properly awarded to the plaintiff.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the finding that the public acquired a prescriptive easement over Sanders Point and the path to Little Harbor Beach.
- The court affirmed that the easement includes parking at Sanders Point and pedestrian access to the beach, with use constrained by reasonableness and compatibility with golf-course operations.
- The court reversed the attorney’s-fee award, holding the case did not fit a recognized exception to the American Rule.

## Legal Principles

- A prescriptive easement requires proof of open, notorious, continuous, uninterrupted, and adverse use under a claim of right for at least twenty years.
- Public use, not merely use by an individual claimant, may establish a prescriptive easement when the evidence shows long-standing use meeting the prescriptive elements.
- Where long-term use is shown and permission is not established, adversity may be inferred; the landowner bears the burden to show the use was permissive.
- The scope of a prescriptive easement is measured by the character and extent of the historical use during the prescriptive period and cannot exceed that use.
- Under the American Rule, each party bears its own attorney’s fees absent statutory or contractual authority, or a recognized equitable exception (such as bad-faith litigation conduct).

## Conclusion

The court upheld a public prescriptive easement allowing the public to park at Sanders Point and walk to Little Harbor Beach because decades of open, continuous, and adverse public use established the right and defined its scope, but it vacated the plaintiff’s attorney’s-fee award because no recognized basis existed to depart from the American Rule.


Jesurum v. WBTSCC Ltd. P'ship, 169 N.H. 469, 151 A.3d 949 (2016)