Fitch v. Forsthoefel

Citations

• 194 Conn. App. 230

Syllabus

The plaintiffs brought this action seeking a declaratory judgment and to quiet title relating to the scope of an ingress and egress easement in favor of the defendants, which was located on a shared driveway on the plaintiffs' property. Following a trial to the court, the trial court rendered judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, from which the defendants appealed to this court. Held: 1. The defendants could not prevail on their claim that the declaratory judgment rendered by the trial court did not provide the plaintiffs with any practical relief and, thus, did not solve a justiciable controversy, which was based on their claim that because the parties agreed that the easement was limited to ingress and egress, the plaintiffs were in the same position they were in prior to the commencement of the action; the plaintiffs' action alleged the overburdening of an easement, specifically, that the scope of permissible uses of the easement by the dominant estate was limited to ingress and egress and that any other use would overburden the easement, the defendants claimed that there was no cause of action for minor, infrequent use of the easement unre- lated to ingress and egress, and the court's judgment, which adjudicated the rights of the parties with respect to the scope of the easement, effectively adopted the plaintiffs' position, and, consequently, the plain- tiffs were not in the same position as they were prior to the commence- ment of the action, and the claimed controversy was justiciable. 2. The defendants' claim that the trial court applied the wrong standard in determining that they had overburdened the easement was unavailing; although the defendants claimed that the court improperly proscribed, contrary to a reasonableness standard, trivial and infrequent conduct, such as the defendants' children writing with chalk on the easement area, given the clear and unequivocal language of the easement, the defendants' rights thereunder were expressly limited to ingres