## Facts

- Six small platted lots formed a narrow alley between O Street and N Street, N.W., in Georgetown.
- Kebreab Zere acquired five of the six lots through tax-sale foreclosures between 2006 and 2011.
- Zere sought to fence across the alley to block passage and applied to consolidate his lots; the Historic Preservation Review Board denied consolidation.
- The District sought to establish that the public had long used the alley as a right of way and therefore held a public prescriptive easement.
- Long-time abutting residents submitted declarations stating the public used the alley daily for decades (about 1980–2016), without asking permission and without owners granting or posting permission.
- The alley was only briefly blocked on a few occasions for federal security measures, not private exclusion.
- The District presented evidence of municipal maintenance (including a streetlight and pavement work) supporting the alley’s public character.
- Zere argued public use was permissive, there was no official municipal record recognizing an easement, tax sales extinguished any easement, and recognition of an easement would be an uncompensated taking.

## Issues

1. Whether the District established, as a matter of law, a public prescriptive easement through open, notorious, continuous, and adverse public use for at least 15 years.
2. Whether a perfected public prescriptive easement was extinguished by later tax-sale foreclosures through which Zere acquired title.
3. Whether Zere preserved a compensable takings claim based on the alleged burden of a public easement.

## Decision

- The court affirmed summary judgment for the District recognizing a public prescriptive easement over the alley and granting declaratory and injunctive relief.
- The court held the record established open, notorious, continuous, and adverse public use for well more than the 15-year period.
- The court rejected Zere’s argument that tax-sale foreclosures extinguished the easement, concluding the easement was visible and observable by inspection and therefore survived the tax sales.
- The court deemed Zere’s takings argument forfeited because he did not properly plead it as a counterclaim for compensation in the trial court.

## Legal Principles

- A prescriptive easement in the District of Columbia requires open and notorious use, continuous and uninterrupted use for at least 15 years, and adverse (non-permissive) use.
- Adversity may be inferred from long-term, regular public use of a passageway without permission where the use would place a reasonably diligent owner on notice of a claimed right of passage.
- A public prescriptive easement does not require formal governmental designation or administrative records; the right arises from the character and duration of use.
- A tax-sale purchaser takes property subject to existing, visible servitudes that are observable on inspection; a perfected prescriptive easement is a vested property interest that survives changes in record title.
- A takings claim for compensation generally must be properly pleaded in the trial court; raising the theory only in opposition to summary judgment is insufficient to preserve it for appellate review.

## Conclusion

The court upheld recognition of a public prescriptive easement over a Georgetown alley based on decades of unpermitted, daily public use, held that the easement survived Zere’s tax-sale purchases because it was visible on inspection, and declined to address compensation because any takings claim was not properly pleaded and was forfeited.


Zere v. District of Columbia, 209 A.3d 94 (D.C. 2019)