## Facts

- A religious organization owned two adjoining parcels: a largely wooded tract in Chapman and a Mapleton tract used for a children’s summer camp.
- Access to both parcels included Baptist Park Road, connecting to a public road and running across both lots.
- The Mapleton portion of Baptist Park Road was maintained by the Town of Mapleton as a public way; there was no evidence the Chapman portion was accepted or maintained as a public way.
- For decades, neighboring landowners and members of the public used the Chapman segment to reach a stream and for recreation, including hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, and travel through the woods.
- Around 2000, the owner erected a barrier on the Chapman segment after concerns about abusive use by ATVs and four-wheel-drive vehicles, which blocked public passage.
- Neighboring landowners sued, claiming the public had acquired a prescriptive easement over the Chapman segment; after a bench trial, the court found a public prescriptive easement and entered judgment for the plaintiffs.
- The owner appealed, challenging whether the public’s use was “adverse” and arguing that Maine law presumes permissive recreational use of open land.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence supported a finding that the public’s long-term use of the Chapman segment of Baptist Park Road was adverse, as required for a public prescriptive easement.
2. Whether the presumption that recreational use of open, unimproved land is permissive applied, and if so, whether the plaintiffs produced sufficient evidence to rebut it.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine vacated the judgment.
- The court held the record did not support the adversity element necessary to establish a public prescriptive easement over the Chapman segment.
- The court concluded that the public’s recreational and access uses of largely unimproved land were presumptively permissive and were not shown to be hostile or under a claim of right.
- The court rejected any inference that the Chapman segment was public merely because the Mapleton segment was a maintained public way.

## Legal Principles

- A prescriptive easement requires open, notorious, continuous, and adverse use for at least 20 years.
- For a public prescriptive easement, plaintiffs must prove the public’s use was adverse to the owner, not merely tolerated.
- Maine presumes public recreational use of large, open, undeveloped land is permissive unless additional circumstances show hostility or a claim of right sufficient to put the owner on notice.
- A road’s public status may differ by segment; municipal acceptance or maintenance of one portion does not establish public rights in an adjoining segment across private land.

## Conclusion

The court vacated the trial court’s recognition of a public prescriptive easement because the evidence showed longstanding recreational use typical of open rural land, which is presumed permissive, and plaintiffs failed to prove adverse public use of the Chapman road segment.


Lyons v. Baptist Sch. of Christian Training, 804 A.2d 364 (Me. 2002)