## Facts

- In 1958, members of the Paine family began operating a commercial campground on a roughly thirty-six–acre parcel of predominantly wooded land in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
- Over the ensuing decades, the Paines and their successors (including Robert Paine, a plaintiff) treated the land as a single campground operation, clearing areas for campsites and creating internal roadways.
- The campground included recurring seasonal campsite fixtures such as picnic tables, fire pits, and campsite markers placed throughout the property.
- The operators made additional improvements consistent with a commercial camping business, including structures and facilities used for campground operations.
- The Paines advertised the campground to the public through methods such as signage and printed advertisements and charged fees to campers.
- To indicate control and exclude others, the Paines installed fencing in locations around the property and posted “no trespassing” signs, though the tract was not fully enclosed.
- The Paines also claimed ownership through a chain of deeds (described as seven deeds in the record), many of which referenced town assessors’ maps and lot numbers; the title history to the area was confusing and subject to competing assertions over time.
- In 1999, the Paines filed a Land Court petition to register title, asserting both record title and title by adverse possession, including a claim of constructive possession of the larger tract under color of title.
- Chellise Sexton later asserted an ownership claim based on a 2007 deed and opposed registration, challenging whether the Paines’ campground activities were sufficient to establish adverse possession of wooded land and whether the deed descriptions were definite enough to support color of title.
- The Land Court found that the Paines established adverse possession and that their deeds supplied color of title extending their claim beyond the areas of specific campground use; Sexton appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether decades of operating and advertising a commercial campground on predominantly wooded land—using the land openly, excluding nonpaying entrants, improving the site, and posting boundaries without fully enclosing the parcel—can satisfy the elements of adverse possession for the statutory period.
2. Whether deeds that identify the claimed premises by reference to town assessors’ map lot numbers can provide sufficiently definite descriptions to constitute color of title, allowing adverse possession to extend to the full premises described rather than only the portions shown in actual use.

## Decision

- The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the Land Court’s judgment registering title in the plaintiffs.
- The court held that, considering the character of the land and the overall pattern of conduct, the plaintiffs’ long-running campground operation constituted actual, open, notorious, exclusive, and adverse possession for well more than twenty years.
- The court rejected the argument that wooded or unimproved land must be fully enclosed or converted to a particular type of improvement to support adverse possession; the question was whether the use would put a record owner on notice of an asserted claim of right.
- The court also affirmed the Land Court’s ruling that the plaintiffs’ deed descriptions—though relying in significant part on assessors’ maps and lot identifiers—were sufficiently definite to support color of title.
- Applying color of title, the court approved extending the plaintiffs’ adverse-possession claim from the areas of demonstrated occupation to the premises described in the deeds.

## Legal Principles

- Adverse possession in Massachusetts requires proof of nonpermissive possession that is actual, open, notorious, exclusive, and adverse for at least twenty years.
- The adequacy of possession is evaluated in context; the acts of dominion must be of a type that would place the true owner on notice that another is asserting ownership.
- For wild or wooded land, courts do not impose a fixed requirement of full enclosure or any single form of improvement; the focus is the totality of the claimant’s conduct and whether it is sufficiently pronounced for that setting.
- Recurring seasonal use may satisfy continuity when it is regular and connected to a stable, ongoing use of the property (such as a continuing commercial campground).
- Under color of title, a claimant who actually possesses part of land described in a deed that purports to convey a larger tract may be treated as possessing the whole described premises, so long as the deed provides a sufficiently definite description.
- A property description may be sufficiently definite for color-of-title purposes when it identifies lots by reference to assessors’ maps that allow the land to be located with reasonable certainty.

## Conclusion

Paine v. Sexton affirmed registration of title for the operators of a long-running commercial campground, holding that their sustained, visible, and exclusionary use of predominantly wooded land satisfied adverse possession and that deeds referencing assessors’ maps provided adequate color of title to extend the claim to the full described premises.


Paine v. Sexton, 37 N.E.3d 1103 (2015)