## Facts

- A West University Place subdivision was platted into 55-foot lots, but homes built in the 1930s–40s were placed as if lots were 50 feet wide, creating a boundary error.
- A 20-foot strip east of Lot 5’s boundary (including a driveway and part of a garage) was treated for decades as belonging to Lot 5, though record title placed it on Lot 6.
- Lillian Haliburton purchased Lot 5 in 1970; her relatives (the Buddes) owned Lot 6 for many years.
- During the period of common ownership by these families, both households used the driveway; the garage straddled the lots, and Haliburton used it for parking and storage.
- In 1995, the Buddes sold Lot 6 to Minh Thu Tran and Norman L. Roser (with Washington Mutual Bank, FA involved as a lender).
- In 2001, Haliburton sold Lot 5 to William and Nita Macha; a survey revealed the driveway strip was not within Lot 5’s boundary.
- The Machas obtained a quitclaim from Haliburton conveying any interest she might have acquired in the strip by adverse possession.
- After Tran and Roser learned of the survey, they obtained a permit and built a fence around the strip, leading to litigation over title.

## Issues

1. Whether long-term shared use of a driveway and garage area, combined with a mutual mistake about the boundary, is legally sufficient to establish adverse possession of the strip by the Lot 5 owner.

## Decision

- The Texas Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and rendered judgment that the Machas take nothing.
- The Court held there was no evidence of the hostile, exclusive, and unmistakable claim of right required for adverse possession.
- The Court concluded that mutual use and mutual mistake did not put the record owner on notice of an adverse, exclusive claim.

## Legal Principles

- Adverse possession requires an actual and visible appropriation of land, commenced and continued under a claim of right inconsistent with and hostile to another’s claim.
- Possession must be exclusive and must unmistakably communicate an assertion of exclusive ownership to the record owner; joint or permissive use is ordinarily insufficient.
- A mistaken belief about ownership or boundary location does not establish adverse possession unless the possessor’s objective conduct is visibly hostile and exclusive.

## Conclusion

Because the driveway and garage strip was used jointly under a shared mistaken belief about the boundary, the evidence did not show exclusive, hostile possession that would clearly notify the record owner of an adverse claim; title therefore remained with the Lot 6 owners, and the Machas recovered nothing.


Tran v. Macha, 213 S.W.3d 913 (Tex. 2006)