Dispute over the scope of an express easement; A grantee’s rights under an easement; Blackhawk Dev Corp v Village of Dexter; Riparian rights in the context of an easement; Dyball v Lennox; “Dock”

The court held that the plain and unambiguous language of the easement at issue allows defendants to moor a boat to the dock and to do so indefinitely during the boating season. Consideration of extrinsic evidence would lead to the same result. Plaintiffs sued defendants alleging a claim for declaratory relief, a cause of action for trespass, and a request to quiet title in plaintiffs’ favor. Defendants filed a counterclaim for declaratory relief. The relevant issue on appeal was whether defendants had the right to indefinitely moor their boat to a dock installed by defendants. The trial court did not expressly state whether mooring the boat could be indefinite, but rather, ruled that the easement allowed defendants “to moor a boat at the dock.” On appeal, the court inferred from the trial court’s ruling that it found “there were no time parameters relative to defendants’ right to moor a boat to the dock, considering that [it] placed no temporal restrictions on mooring a boat.” The court first noted that “mooring a boat to a dock is necessary and incident to the reasonable and proper enjoyment of an easement that allows a grantee to install and maintain a dock.” It next found that, as to whether the boat can be moored to the dock indefinitely, there was “no express language restricting or limiting the usage.” The easement “does not contain any temporal limitation or restriction with respect to the use of the dock. And the silence, rather than creating an ambiguity or demonstrating no intent to allow permanent or indefinite use, plainly and unambiguously establishes that the intent was to allow indefinite use of the dock by defendants, which includes mooring a boat.” Indeed, the easement “employs express limiting language when indicating that the grantees may only park ‘temporarily’ upon the easement, but no comparable language was used in describing the right to maintain a dock—with the incidental right to moor a boat to the dock.” Finally, were there “an actual dispute between defendants and the other easement holders, perhaps defendants’ dock and mooring rights could be restricted, but this is not the issue or situation before us.” Affirmed.