Wels v. Hippe

This case offers the chance to eliminate or to exacerbate confusion in the law of prescriptive easements. Here, a well-established line of cases collide with what will become a new line of cases. The conflict requires this court to decide whether the law will continue to require that, in order to claim a prescriptive easement over preexisting roads of unknown origin, the claimants must show that their use interfered with the owner’s use of the road, so as to prove the requisite open, notorious, and adverse use. The majority opinion offers a nascent alternative that will render the…