## Facts

- Philip Kruvant, Charles Kruvant, and Bobcar Corporation (plaintiffs) were the record owners of a roughly 10-acre parcel in West Orange, New Jersey (Lot 1445‑B, “Lot B”).
- 12‑22 Woodland Avenue Corporation, trading as Suburban Essex Riding Club (defendant), operated a boarding stable (about 100 horses) and a riding academy across Nicholas Avenue from Lot B.
- A bridle trail ran diagonally across Lot B for about 800 feet to an oversized culvert constructed in 1939, which allowed horses to pass under Prospect Street and connect to Eagle Rock Reservation’s bridle trail system.
- For many years, the club, its riders, and others associated with the stable regularly rode along this route across Lot B to reach the reservation.
- Plaintiffs did not object for decades. A conversation with an attorney at a party alerted one of the owners that continued riding across Lot B might have created an enforceable right to use the trail.
- Shortly after that, plaintiffs demanded for the first time that the club either pay rent for the use or stop using Lot B. The club refused.
- Plaintiffs filed suit seeking to terminate the club’s use of the bridle trail and other portions of Lot B and to recover damages for use and occupancy (rent), including for the period beginning in 1973.
- The club counterclaimed, seeking a declaration that it had acquired either (1) fee title by adverse possession to the trail area (and related areas) or (2) a prescriptive easement to continue using the bridle trail.
- The court treated November 1, 1945 (a conveyance date affecting the chain of title for part of the trail area) as the starting point for evaluating whether long-term use could mature into prescriptive rights.

## Issues

1. Whether the club’s use of the bridle trail and related areas on Lot B was sufficient to give the club fee title by adverse possession.
2. Whether the club’s long, visible, and continuous use of the bridle trail instead created a prescriptive easement, despite plaintiffs’ claim that the use was permissive.
3. If a prescriptive right existed, whether plaintiffs could still bar the riding use and recover rent-like damages for use and occupancy within the area and manner covered by that right.

## Decision

- The court rejected the club’s claim to fee title by adverse possession because the proof did not show the type of exclusive, owner-like dominion required to take title to the land.
- The court found that the club established a prescriptive easement over the defined bridle trail route crossing Lot B to the culvert leading into Eagle Rock Reservation.
- The court limited the easement to the character and extent of the historic use proven at trial (i.e., passage along the established trail), and it did not grant a broader right over the entire parcel.
- Because the club held a prescriptive easement, plaintiffs could not terminate the riding use to the extent it fell within the easement’s scope.
- Plaintiffs’ damages/use-and-occupancy claim could not succeed for use that constituted lawful exercise of the easement.

## Legal Principles

- Adverse possession in New Jersey requires actual, open and notorious, continuous possession for the statutory period, under a claim of right hostile to the true owner, and sufficiently exclusive to reflect ownership-level control.
- A prescriptive easement may be acquired by open, notorious, continuous, and adverse use for the prescriptive period, but it creates a nonpossessory right to use land (commonly a right-of-way), not ownership of the fee.
- Long-continued, unexplained use of a definite path across another’s land may support an inference that the use was adverse rather than permissive, unless the servient owner proves that the use began and continued by permission.
- A prescriptive easement’s scope is defined by the use that created it: the route, frequency, and purpose shown by the evidence set the limits of the right; it does not expand into a general right to occupy or control the servient estate.
- Use that is consistent with a right-of-way (repeated passage) can support an easement by prescription even when it falls short of the exclusive possession needed for adverse-possession title.

## Conclusion

The Law Division held that the riding club’s decades of open, continuous horse travel along the established bridle trail across Lot B created a prescriptive easement limited to that historic route and use, but the club failed to prove the exclusive, owner-like possession necessary for adverse-possession title; plaintiffs therefore remained fee owners subject to the easement and could not recover rent-type damages for use within the easement’s bounds.


Kruvant v. 12-22 Woodland Avenue Corp., 350 A.2d 102 (1975)