The Pennsylvania Superior Court has clarified the law on easements in a ruling that resolves a long-running dispute over a dirt access road shared for nearly six decades by neighboring property owners in Wayne County.

In Swingle v. Halsey, the appellate court had previously agreed with the trial court’s grant of a 20-foot prescriptive easement over the access road to the Swingle parties because the evidence showed that Swingle and his predecessors had maintained the access road for 59 years, had openly used it for residential access and were never told not to use it.

But the appeals judges ordered the trial court to revisit the issue of allowing “increased commercial use” of the access road, which began in 2011 when the Swingles leased their property to quarry operators.

Evidence show that the commercial use created significant traffic and garbage build-up. The trial court determined the prescriptive easement did not allow any commercial use of the dirt road by the quarry operators.

The Superior Court agreed. In a December 2023 decision, the appellate court said it recognized that a prescriptive easement’s usage can evolve over time, but found that a change from residential to commercial use was too extreme.

Therefore, the Superior Court affirmed the limitation imposed by the trial court, granting the prescriptive easement solely for residential use. The Superior Court also found the trial court did not err by failing to determine whether “commercial usage” occurred prior to the quarry operator’s use of the land.

For more information about property use, prescriptive easements or real estate matters in general, contact Samuel Finkel at sfinkel@foxrothschild.com or 215.918.3553.