## Facts

- Sylvia Harris and Denise McDonald owned adjacent lots in Mountain Glacier Estates near Homer, Alaska.
- The Harrises bought their lot from a common grantor in 1982 (recorded 1983) and built a driveway to the homesite in spring 1983.
- Harris used and maintained the driveway year-round from 1983 onward and treated it as private access, including posting “no trespassing”/“private drive” signs and placing logs to block public traffic.
- McDonald purchased the neighboring lot in April 1986 without obtaining a survey, relying instead on an inaccurate sketch of the boundary.
- A survey almost ten years later revealed the driveway encroached onto McDonald’s land.
- After learning of the encroachment, McDonald blocked Harris’s use of the driveway, prompting Harris to sue for a prescriptive easement.
- The superior court found continuity, hostility, and notoriety for the ten-year period and granted Harris a prescriptive easement over the encroaching portion of the driveway.

## Issues

1. Whether Harris proved continuous use of the driveway for the required ten-year prescriptive period.
2. Whether “hostility” is defeated when neither party initially knew the driveway encroached on McDonald’s land.
3. Whether “open and notorious” use requires actual knowledge of the encroachment by the record owner.

## Decision

- The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed the judgment granting Harris a prescriptive easement.
- The court held the superior court did not clearly err in finding continuous use from spring 1983 until McDonald blocked use in 1995, exceeding ten years.
- The court held hostility was satisfied under an objective test because Harris used the driveway as if entitled to do so, regardless of mutual mistake about the boundary.
- The court held notoriety was satisfied because the driveway and its use were visible and obvious such that a reasonably diligent owner would have discovered the adverse use; actual knowledge was not required.

## Legal Principles

- A prescriptive easement requires proof of continuous, hostile, and open and notorious use for the statutory period.
- Continuous use is established by regular, uninterrupted use consistent with the nature of the claimed easement (including year-round residential access).
- Hostility is evaluated objectively; mutual ignorance or mistake about a boundary does not convert adverse use into permissive use.
- Open and notorious use does not require actual notice; it is enough that the use is sufficiently visible to put a reasonably diligent landowner on notice.
- Appellate review of trial-court findings on the prescriptive elements is deferential and will be reversed only if clearly erroneous.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed a prescriptive driveway easement, holding that sustained residential use over more than ten years, combined with visible acts of private control, satisfied continuity and provided objective hostility and notoriety even though the parties initially lacked actual knowledge of the boundary encroachment.


McDonald v. Harris, 978 P.2d 81 (Alaska 1999)