Vering v. Groton Long Point Assn., Inc.

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, each an owner of real property in the Groton Long Point section of Groton and, as such, a member of the defendant association, sought, inter alia, a declaratory judgment that they had the right to use certain rights-of-way owned by the defendant that abutted their respective properties to the exclusion of all other members of the defen- dant and the general public. The two rights-of-way at issue were five foot wide strips of land running through a tract of land that was bounded by a road in the northeast and by a beach along Long Island Sound in the southwest. The entire tract was originally owned by G Co., which subdivided the land, separately deeded the plaintiffs' properties to their predecessors in title and deeded to the defendant certain common area tracts and all of its rights, title, and interest to the shore, roads, and rights-of-way in Groton Long Point. The plaintiffs each owned one or more road front or beachfront properties in the tract, the deeds to which indicated that each such property was bounded by the right-of-way it abutted. In 1999 and 2000, one of the plaintiffs sent letters to the defen- dant's board of directors, urging them to recognize that the rights-of- way were not to be used by the public or residents of Groton Long Point at large but, instead, were intended only to provide limited rights- of-way dedicated to the lots they abutted. A few years later, the defendant sent letters to the residents of Groton Long Point, asserting ownership of the rights-of-way and instructing adjacent property owners who had encroached on the rights-of-way to remove any impediments that were obstructing access. For many years, both before and after these letters were sent, the rights-of-way were covered with vegetation. In May, 2019, the defendant sent letters to the plaintiffs informing them that they were going to remove bushes and other impediments from the rights-of-way. Shortly thereafter, unnamed individuals began to clear the vegetati