## Facts

- The Pecks owned a registered cranberry bog parcel whose certificate of title listed appurtenant rights over an adjoining, nonregistered parcel later owned by Williams, including a right of way, rights to take sand and build bog houses, and a right to cut shading trees.
- On April 30, 1976, both the dominant (Peck) parcel and the servient (Williams) parcel came into common ownership and possession under the Edgewood Trust.
- On September 2, 1976, Edgewood severed ownership by conveying the servient parcel (through a straw conveyance) to Williams; the deeds for that transfer did not reference any easement.
- Edgewood later conveyed the dominant registered parcel to the Pecks in 1986; the easement language still appeared on the registered certificate.
- Relying on the certificate, the Pecks entered the Williams parcel, removed trees on approximately 1.6 acres, and excavated sand in additional areas, prompting Williams to seek declaratory relief that the easement had been extinguished.

## Issues

1. Whether appurtenant easement rights over nonregistered land, benefiting registered land and shown on the dominant parcel’s certificate of title, were extinguished when the dominant and servient parcels came into common ownership in 1976.
2. Whether the Massachusetts registered land system’s certificate-of-title protections prevented extinguishment by merger or caused the easement to continue despite merger and later severance.

## Decision

- The Appeals Court of Massachusetts affirmed the Land Court’s judgment that the easement was extinguished by merger in 1976 when both parcels came into unity of title and possession.
- The court held the easement was not revived by later severance of the parcels and was not preserved by its continued listing on the dominant parcel’s registered certificate.
- The court upheld the order directing that the easement language be struck from the Pecks’ certificate of title.

## Legal Principles

- An appurtenant easement is extinguished when the dominant and servient estates come into unity of title and possession in the same owner at the same time (merger).
- After merger extinguishes an easement, later severance does not restore the easement unless it is re-created by a legally recognized method (e.g., grant or reservation).
- The party asserting an easement bears the burden to prove its continued existence.
- The registered land system protects reliance on certificates as to existing interests but does not create or preserve property rights that have been extinguished under substantive property law; a certificate’s continued notation cannot, by itself, reestablish an extinguished easement.

## Conclusion

The court held that common ownership of the dominant and servient parcels extinguished the appurtenant easement by merger, and neither later separation of title nor the easement’s continued appearance on a registered certificate revived or preserved it; the easement notation was properly removed from the certificate.


Williams Bros. Inc. of Marshfield v. Peck, 966 N.E.2d 860 (Mass. App. Ct. 2012)