## Facts

- Henry Willis owned a larger tract and divided it into lots.
- Willis sold Robert G. Stuckey a lot that had no direct access to a public road.
- Because the lot was enclosed, Willis granted Stuckey a servitude of passage over Willis’s remaining land to reach the highway and built an access driveway for that purpose.
- Other potential routes across Willis’s remaining property were not realistically available because much of the land was swampy.
- The constructed driveway reached the highway only by first crossing a narrow strip of land at the highway owned by Richard Collins, not Willis.
- Collins knew Stuckey was using the driveway across Collins’s strip and initially did not object.
- Collins later erected a barrier/gate with a lock at the highway end of the driveway but gave Stuckey a key and permitted continued use.
- Stuckey became dissatisfied with the obstruction, removed the barrier, and Collins replaced it.
- Stuckey sued to have a servitude of passage recognized across Collins’s strip to the public road.
- The trial court granted Stuckey an unimpeded right of passage, 30 feet wide, across Collins’s strip, and Collins appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the owner of an enclosed estate may obtain a legal servitude of passage across a neighbor’s narrow strip that lies between an existing access driveway and the public highway.
2. Whether the trial court erred in ordering the passage to be unimpeded and fixing its width at 30 feet at the point where the existing driveway meets the highway.

## Decision

- The court of appeal affirmed the trial court’s judgment recognizing Stuckey’s right of passage across Collins’s strip to the public road.
- The court of appeal affirmed the location of the passage along the existing driveway’s connection to the highway.
- The court of appeal affirmed the grant of an unimpeded passage 30 feet in width.

## Legal Principles

- Louisiana law allows an owner whose land has no access to a public road to demand a right of passage over neighboring property to reach the public road, with compensation as provided by the Civil Code.
- The passage for an enclosed estate should be fixed at a location that minimizes the distance to the public road and causes the least damage to the servient estate, considering the physical condition of the land and existing routes.
- A court may set the dimensions of the passage to make it reasonably adequate for normal vehicular access to and from the enclosed property.
- When an existing driveway is the only workable access because alternative routes are effectively unavailable due to terrain, a passage aligned with that driveway may satisfy the Civil Code’s location requirements.

## Conclusion

Stuckey’s lot was enclosed, and the only workable access to the highway followed a driveway built across Willis’s land that necessarily crossed Collins’s narrow frontage strip at the road. The court of appeal held Stuckey was entitled to a legal servitude of passage across Collins’s strip and affirmed a 30-foot-wide, unimpeded right of passage at the driveway’s existing connection to the public road.


Stuckey v. Collins, 464 So.2d 346 (1985)