Dickinson v. Pake

HUSKINS, Justice.

Development of the law in North Carolina with respect to acquisition of prescriptive easements has followed a tortuous route — roundabout and bent in different directions.

Coke states that at common law a long, continuous and peaceable user was necessary to establish a prescriptive right. Coke on Littleton § 113B. However, most American courts have sought to equate acquisition of prescriptive easements to acquisition of title by adverse possession so that it is generally held that prescriptive acquisition requires open, exclusive, continuous, uninterrupted, adverse user under…