Case Law Summaries

J & M Land Company v. First Union National Bank

• Opinion Date: February 27, 2001
• Real Property Law
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ADVERSE POSSESSION—Title does not vest by adverse possession until 30 years (or 60 years, in the case of uncultivated land) because the 20 year statute is only procedural and thus only sets a time limit on when judicial authority may be invoked by a landowner to obtain possession.

A number of billboards were erected on uncultivated marshland. The land consisted of two adjacent tracts. The predecessor in title of one of the tract owners had leased three sites to a sign company. At the time, no one was aware that one of the three sites was located on the neighboring land. Consequently, two billboards were located on land that did not belong to the sign company’s landlord. For thirty-nine years, the sign company paid rent and the adjacent property owner, where the billboards were incorrectly located, paid taxes on the underlying property. Then, the municipality’s tax assessor increased the neighboring property owner’s tax assessment based on the fact that the two billboards were located on the property. Until that time, the neighboring property owner did not know about the billboards. Thereafter, it demanded that the adjacent landlord-landowner turn over all of the rents it had received from the sign company for the billboards. In response, the sign company’s landlord sought a declaratory judgment that it had acquired a “prescriptive easement” over the area where the billboards had been improperly located and over the adjacent land used for maintenance of the billboards. In the alternative, it sought title by adverse possession. The lower court concluded that the legal requirements for a prescriptive easement were the same as those to obtain title by adverse possession. The lower court further determined that the landlord-landowner had not established its claim. Its findings were that adverse possession claims to “uncultivated tracts” were governed by the sixty-year limitations for adverse possession. Therefore, the landlord-landowner had not acquired title because it only possessed the property for thirty-nine years. Further, the lower court ruled that the possession was not “notorious” because the boundary line between the two properties was not visible to the naked eye. Lastly, the lower court held that the aggrieved property owner was entitled to rents only for the period subsequent to its demand. On appeal, the Appellate Division affirmed the lower court’s “application of the sixty-year statute of limitations, rejecting the landlord-landowner’s argument that the use of disputed land qualified as a prescriptive easement.” The matter was further appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court. According to the Supreme Court, there were four relevant statutes of limitation: “N.J.S.A. 2A:14-6 and -7 [which had] been interpreted to mean that a possession adverse for twenty years gives title by adverse possession - and actual title as distinguished from a mere right of entry[, and] N.J.S.A. 2A:14-30 and -31 [which] provide[s] that possession for thirty or sixty years establishes full and complete title in the occupier of the land.” These statutes of limitation were not present in the common law. The seemingly conflicting statutes went back to Acts of 1787 and of 1799. Further, “[d]ecisional law also [had] created tension between the two sets of statutes.” According to the Court, “[t]he plain language of N.J.S.A. 2A:14-6 and -7 [did] not address the status of the landowner’s title or right to possession between expiration of the twenty-year limitations period and satisfaction of the thirty- or sixty-year adverse possession period.” The trend in the case law had been to state that “title vests after twenty years of adverse possession, despite the fact that the twenty-year statutes [had] never expressly vested title in adverse possessors, and despite the existence of the thirty/sixty-year statutes.” The sixty-year statute was amended in 1922 to reduce the number of years of adverse possession to thirty years for all property other than woodlands or uncultivated tracts. The Court found this amendment to be significant because it demonstrated that the “legislature did not think the Act of 1799 had repealed the Act of 1787 and because the language demonstrate[d] a clear legislative intent not to allow a vesting of title after only twenty years of adverse possession.” With this in mind, the Court rejected the landlord-landowner’s contention that it, the alleged adverse possessor, was free to choose which statute should control. Essentially, the Court ruled that the “twenty-year statutes set a time limit on when judicial authority may be invoked by a landowner to obtain possession,” whereas, in contrast, “the thirty/sixty-year statutes focus on what actions must be taken in order to acquire title.” Essentially, the twenty-year statutes are procedural statutes of limitation, having existed at common law, whereas the thirty/sixty-year statutes are substantive statutes creating a cause of action for adverse possession that did not exist at common law. Further, “allowing the adverse possessor to choose which statute to apply would render the thirty/sixty-year statute a nullity.” Consequently, in this case, because the property was uncultivated, the sixty-year statute of limitations had to be satisfied before right to title by adverse possession could vest. Because the aggrieved property owner “interrupted the chain of possession before the sixty years had expired,” the landlord-landowner could not establish adverse possession. Further, because use of the property for the 39 years was “possessory rather than mere enjoyment of the land, there [was] no prescriptive easement.” “Two characteristics of an easement that distinguish it from a possessory interest are that an easement constitutes a ‘limited use or enjoyment of the land’ and ‘is not a normal incident of possessory land interest.’ The fact that the landlord had executed a lease of the disputed land to the sign company demonstrated that the landlord was operating “under a claim of possession rather than merely use and enjoyment of the land.” Further, in 1948 a forerunner to the current ejectment statute, N.J.S. 2A:35-1 was amended. That statute “replace[d] the common-law action of ejectment and ordinarily is addressed to matters involving both claims to possession by a [landowner] as well as claims by him – real or constructive – to title to the realty.” Because the statute replaced the common law of ejectment, a “landowner can elect to pursue an action in the Superior Court claiming title to real property or claiming the right to possession in lieu of an ejectment action, ... even when the wrongful possessor has been in possession for twenty years or more.” Consequently, the Court held “that because N.J.S.A. 2A:35-1 contains no specified time in which proceedings must be instituted thereunder, its practical effect is to supercede those provisions in N.J.S.A. 2A:14-6 and -7 that create repose for common-law ejectment actions after twenty years.” Lastly, the Court gave its ruling prospective effect “because stability and predictability in real property law are extremely important,” and the Court did not wish to have an effect on titles established by adverse possession contrary to its current holding.

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