Real property – Adverse possession

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Where an adverse possession claim has been asserted by the defendant owners of 80 Kendall Lane in Natick, they have obtained by adverse possession all areas on 1 H.F. Brown Way that are adjacent to 80 Kendall Lane but west of a wooded buffer, subject to an easement benefiting 1 H.F. Brown Way for an underground sewer line.

“October 1962. Most Americans are tending to news of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but those residing near 80 Kendall Lane in Natick, Massachusetts, are watching a second conflict unfold: that caused by construction of a factory at what’s now known as 1 H.F. Brown Way.

“These crises had two things in common. Both ended in October 1962, and the contemporaneous understanding of how each ended differs from what actually happened. The superpower dispute was thought to have concluded because President John F. Kennedy had held firm to his insistence that the Soviet Union remove its missiles from Cuba; his resolve seemingly precipitated a Soviet retreat. The public was unaware that Kennedy secretly had agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey in return for the Soviets doing the same in Cuba. … The Kendall Lane crisis similarly was rumored to have ended in an act of capitulation, that by the factory’s builder. The reality’s more complicated.

“The parties to this adverse-possession dispute — defendants/counterclaim-plaintiffs Paul and Pamela Ahern, the current owners of 80 Kendall Lane, and plaintiff/counterclaim-defendant Stonegate Browns Way 2021 LLC (‘Stonegate’), the current owner of 1 H.F. Brown Way — tried their case to this Court in a much later October, October 21-23, 2024, and delivered their closing arguments on December 12, 2024. The Court took a view of the parties’ properties on the first day of trial. At the close of the Aherns’ evidence, the Court found in Stonegate’s favor that the Aherns hadn’t proven exclusive use of a wooded buffer east of 80 Kendall Lane (the ‘Buffer’) that borders a parking lot on 1 H.F. Brown Way. Having considered what the Court saw on its view, the testimony of the parties’ witnesses, and the documents admitted into evidence, and having heard and read the arguments of the parties’ counsel, the Court holds that the Aherns have obtained by adverse possession all areas on 1 H.F. Brown Way that are adjacent to 80 Kendall Lane but west of the Buffer, subject to an easement benefiting 1 H.F. Brown Way for an underground sewer line.”

Stonegate Browns Way 2021 LLC v. Ahern, et al. (Lawyers Weekly No. 14-010-25) (13 pages) (Vhay, J.) (Middlesex Land Court) (Docket No. 23 MISC 000093) (Feb. 27, 2025).

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