## Facts

- In 1924–1925, adjoining lot owners Austin Schiltz and William Floom orally agreed to build a shared cement driveway centered on their boundary line, each paying half the cost.
- A cement driveway about seven feet wide and 110 feet long was constructed on both properties, with concrete connections to each owner’s garage.
- From construction until 1948, both households continuously used the driveway for access to their homes and garages.
- In 1948, Shanks acquired Schiltz’s property, and Floom’s property passed to his heirs; both sides continued using the driveway as before.
- In 1951, Shanks sued to quiet title and to enjoin the neighboring owners from using the driveway, seeking exclusive rights over the portion on Shanks’s land.

## Issues

1. Whether long, open, uninterrupted joint use of a boundary-line driveway constructed under an oral agreement can create reciprocal easements by prescription over each other’s land.
2. Whether such easements, if established, run with the land and bind and benefit successors in title despite not being stated in later deeds.
3. Whether the cooperative origin of the driveway made the use permissive rather than adverse under a claim of right, preventing prescription.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed the judgment for the defendants.
- The Court held that reciprocal prescriptive easements existed for use of the driveway over the portions lying on each neighbor’s land.
- The Court held the easements were appurtenant and passed to successors in title.
- The Court denied the requested injunction and refused to quiet title free of the neighbors’ easement rights.

## Legal Principles

- A prescriptive easement in Ohio requires open, notorious, continuous, and adverse use under a claim of right for at least twenty-one years.
- Where adjoining owners construct and use a common driveway along a boundary line for more than the prescriptive period, a rebuttable presumption may arise that each used the other’s portion under a claim of right sufficient for prescription.
- An oral arrangement to create a permanent shared improvement, followed by long reciprocal use, may support prescription and is not treated as a revocable license once the prescriptive elements are met.
- Prescriptive easements are property interests appurtenant to the dominant estate and generally pass with the land to successors, even if not expressly described in subsequent conveyances.
- A servient owner cannot quiet title to exclude a valid easement holder, and injunctive relief barring use is improper where an easement is established.

## Conclusion

The court recognized that decades of visible, uninterrupted shared use of a boundary-line driveway built as a permanent common improvement created reciprocal prescriptive easements that ran with both parcels, so the purchasers could not quiet title to eliminate the neighbor’s rights or enjoin continued driveway use.


Shanks v. Floom, 124 N.E.2d 416 (Ohio 1955)