## Facts

- In 1963, the common owners of a tract conveyed an interior parcel and, in the same instrument, created an appurtenant, metes-and-bounds, 30-foot-wide roadway easement across the remaining land to a public road.
- In 1969, Dale H. Mueller purchased the servient land burdened by the recorded easement.
- The former interior parcel was later divided among multiple owners, including Richard F. Hoblyn and Gary Hoblyn, who claimed the easement as appurtenant to their parcels (dominant estates).
- For years, dominant-estate owners often used a bladed/plowed roadway that did not match the recorded easement’s surveyed location, in part due to winter conditions.
- A 1990 survey showed that most of the traveled roadway lay outside the recorded easement and that the recorded strip crossed areas Mueller used for farming and a well site.
- Beginning around 1977, Mueller installed a water well and related improvements within the recorded easement, fenced the area, farmed up to the fence, and refused to allow use of the recorded corridor, asserting abandonment and adverse possession.
- Hoblyn sued to quiet title to the easement; Mueller counterclaimed and joined other dominant-estate owners.
- After a bench trial, the district court found no abandonment, found adverse possession only as to a roughly 200-foot segment near the well, and quieted title to the remainder of the easement in the dominant-estate owners.
- Multiple parties appealed in consolidated appeals.

## Issues

1. Whether the dominant-estate owners abandoned the recorded easement by nonuse of the described strip and use of an alternative roadway.
2. Whether the servient owner extinguished all or part of the recorded easement by adverse possession through fencing, farming, and construction of a well.
3. Whether, and to what extent, any extinguishment by adverse possession affected the continued existence of the easement along the remaining corridor.

## Decision

- The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed the determination that the easement was not abandoned.
- The court held that a servient owner may extinguish an easement by adverse possession, but only to the extent of the area actually possessed in a manner inconsistent with the easement.
- The court agreed that Mueller’s well and fenced enclosure supported adverse-possession extinguishment of only a small portion of the easement near the well.
- The court reversed in part and remanded to correct or refine the description and limits of the segment deemed extinguished by adverse possession.
- The court left the remainder of the recorded easement in force as appurtenant to the dominant estates.

## Legal Principles

- Abandonment of an easement requires affirmative conduct showing a clear intent to permanently relinquish the easement; nonuse alone is insufficient.
- Use of an alternative route, without more, generally does not establish abandonment of a recorded easement.
- A servient owner may extinguish an easement by adverse possession when the servient owner’s occupancy is open, notorious, continuous for the statutory period, and inconsistent with the dominant owner’s right of use.
- Extinguishment by adverse possession is limited to the portion of the easement that is actually and adversely occupied; it does not automatically terminate the entire easement.
- Physical obstructions that block passage (such as a well and fenced enclosure within the easement corridor) may satisfy the “inconsistent with easement rights” element for the obstructed segment.

## Conclusion

The court held that the recorded access easement was not terminated by abandonment despite long-term use of a different roadway, and that the servient owner proved adverse-possession extinguishment only for a limited segment near a well; it affirmed the easement’s continuing validity elsewhere and remanded to precisely define the extinguished segment.


Mueller v. Hoblyn, 887 P.2d 500 (Wyo. 1994)