This is a tale of intertwined claims of right by the plaintiffs to the use of property at Kings Beach, Lake Tahoe, for the parking of garbage trucks and the storage of garbage bins. One claim is predicated on an easement, the other on a lease. The property subject to the easement and lease is referred to as a portion of "Parcel One." The property, owned by plaintiffs Brian and Dawn Rye (the Ryes), is the subject of a complaint and cross-complaint to determine the rights of the parties to its use. The complaint by Brian Rye, based on the easement, seeks to bar defendant Tahoe Truckee Sierra Disposal Company, Inc. (Tahoe Truckee), from the use of the area subject to the easement beyond its historic uses. The cross-complaint by Tahoe Truckee against the Ryes claims the right to use all of the subject property, as the need arises, either by reliance on the easement or the lease.
Defendant Tahoe Truckee operates a garbage disposal business and has need of the area of the property subject to the easement or lease for the use of its garbage trucks and the storage of its garbage bins. The easement derives from a reservation in a 1981 recorded deed transferring the servient tenement to the Ryes' predecessors. The unrecorded lease derives from a purported 1982 agreement between the Shaffers and Tahoe Truckee. The parties disagree whether Tahoe Truckee may expand its parking and storage within the area subject to the easement beyond its historic uses. They necessarily disagree whether the lease was invalid or abandoned.
A substantially identical area to the drawing of a portion of Parcel One is shown on an exhibit to an unrecorded, 1982, 99-year lease from the Shaffers to Kings Beach (Tahoe Truckee) for use "in conjunction with its solid waste disposal business, including the storage of empty garbage bins." The terms of the lease (exhibit 57) parallel the area and purpose of the easement. Neither Tahoe Truckee nor the owners of Parcel One sought to enforce the lease in the 22 years from its inception until its sale to the Ryes. The trial court ruled that, assuming the validity of the lease, it had been abandoned because "Tahoe City Disposal Company [(Tahoe Truckee)] clearly disregarded the lease as soon as it was signed." "[A]lthough the lease was valid when formed, the lease was completely ignored and abandoned."
The trial court also ruled that the terms of the written easement were not exclusive. It limited the defendant to the historic use of the paved area and 10 feet beyond the paved area. It issued an injunction barring Tahoe Truckee from expanding its use beyond this area. We agree.
We shall affirm the judgment limiting the defendant to the historic uses of the easement.
The case was tried to the court and the facts are taken mainly from the trial court's statement of decision.
Defendant, Tahoe Truckee, is the owner of a recorded easement over a portion of Parcel One at Kings Beach, California, for the use by its garbage trucks and the storage of its garbage bins.
The trial court ruled that "[t]he precise derivation of [the] easement language was not established at trial.... S[i]lvano Achiro [(a principal in Tahoe Truckee)] was the only trial witness involved ... in the 1981 transaction that culminated in [the] easement language." The trial court "provisionally received, without actually admitting," Achiro's testimony that he intended that the easement holder "be able to use the entire easement area ... for trucks, parking, storage or other disposal business operations." The testimony was never admitted. The court said: "Because the language [of the easement] is not reasonably susceptible to another meaning ... there is no need to resort to extrinsic evidence to ascertain the intent of the parties."
The area of the servient tenement is shown on a plot map prepared by Brian Rye. (Appen. A, post, at p. 96.) The map describes the area as subject to an "easement for parking, ingress, egress, utilities and storage in favor of Kings Beach Disposal" and language identical to that is contained in the easement. The map shows a paved area and an unpaved area.
At some point Parcel One was purchased from the Shaffers by John Serpa, who in turn offered to sell it to plaintiff Brian Rye's father Gerald Rye and Simon Thomas for use as a tree maintenance and wood supply service known as Bushwhackers, Inc. (Bushwhackers). In 1995 Gerald Rye entered into an agreement to purchase Parcel One from John Serpa. "A condensed version [of the transaction] thereafter includes the purchaser's failure to make required payments to Serpa, and Serpa's failure to remove easements to the property." In 2004 Gerald Rye's son, Brian Rye, became Gerald's assignee under the agreement. There followed numerous letters from Brian Rye's attorneys
Accordingly, in 2004 the Ryes, by grant deed from Serpa, "became record title holders of the servient tenement ... Parcel One, burdened by an easement in favor of [Tahoe Truckee]." From 1996 to 2004 the parties coexisted within the easement area with defendant using the paved area and a small portion of the unpaved area and Bushwhackers using the unpaved areas. In 2004 Placer County ordered Bushwhackers to cease all business operations on the parcel.
The easement area was paved by Tahoe Truckee so that front loader vehicles could turn. Silvano Achiro testified that it was his company (Tahoe Truckee) that paved the area. The dirt area was used almost exclusively by Bushwhackers for the parking of its vehicles, for storage of cut timber, for wood chipping, and for ingress and egress by its trucks and equipment to store piles of wood on the property. Tahoe Truckee's route supervisor testified that from 1995 through 2004 Tahoe Truckee used the paved area as a staging area where its trucks came in and out with dumpsters on a near-daily basis. In 2000 large areas of Bushwhackers's wood rounds started appearing in the dirt portion of the easement area, which impeded Tahoe Truckee's trucks from using the nonpaved areas to unload its dumpsters.
The trial court issued a judgment finding that Tahoe Truckee is "entitled to continued use of the paved area [of the servient tenement] only for storage and parking. Its continued use for those purposes shall extend ten feet past the edge of the paved area, consistent with the evidence of its prior use of that portion of the dirt area for storage of garbage bins or dumpsters." The trial court issued an injunction barring Tahoe Truckee from use of the servient tenement beyond these areas.
Tahoe Truckee claims that on August 20, 1982, Kings Beach (Tahoe Truckee) entered into a lease with the Shaffers.
The record contains two copies of the lease agreement, exhibits 2 and 57. They are not identical. While the general terms are the same, exhibit 2 contains blanks where exhibit 57 shows the beginning and end dates of the lease. "... Exhibit 57 contains the initials of the parties at the bottom of the pages, while Exhibit 2 does not; and Exhibit 57 contains an attached exhibit showing the property [(similar to the easement)], while Exhibit 2 does not." Exhibit 57 contains an added inscription showing the signature of Budd J.
The trial court stated that the "circumstances concerning [the] lease are murky at best, and highly suspicious, at worst." It put aside the "obvious questions concerning the authenticity of the lease (Exhibit 57)" and "assum[ed] the lease to be valid" for the purpose of considering whether it had been abandoned. It said: "[E]ven assuming the purported lease was properly authenticated, the later discovery and reaction to the lease raise questions about the vitality of the lease."
The lease (exhibit 57) states that on August 20, 1982, the Shaffers conveyed to Tahoe City Disposal Company, Inc. (Tahoe Truckee), a 99-year lease of the same portion of Parcel One subject to the easement. The terms of the lease permit the lessee to "use the leased premises in conjunction with its solid waste disposal business, including the storage of empty garbage bins." The lease further recites that "the parties ... have agreed to enter into this long term lease agreement to provide the lessee with the use and benefit of the property ... in full satisfaction of lessor's obligation to exchange and transfer such real property to the lessee."
The lease was signed on behalf of Tahoe City Disposal Company, Inc. (Tahoe Truckee), by Silvano Achiro, a member of the family that owned and still owns the disposal companies, and by the former owners of Parcel One, the Shaffers. The Shaffers later sold Parcel One to John Serpa. Serpa negotiated with Brian Rye or his father for the sale of Parcel One for eight years without either party mentioning the lease. In 2004, just before completion of the sale to the Ryes, he sent an incomplete copy of the lease (exhibit 2) to Brian Rye. The "original lease [(exhibit 57)] with the original exhibit" was located in the files of Tahoe Truckee in 2008. Neither Tahoe Truckee or the Ryes (or their predecessors) invoked the provisions of the lease for the 22 years from its inception in 1982 to the sale to the Ryes in 2004.
Brian Rye testified that he became aware of the lease on January 6, 2004, when John Serpa faxed a copy of the incomplete lease (exhibit 2) to Rye's attorneys during the period when Rye was in the process of purchasing Parcel One. Rye had never seen the lease and Tahoe Truckee's use of the servient tenement was consistent with its use under color of an easement. "Rye doubted that the purported lease was effective. He had not heard of such a lease before, and no such lease [had] been recorded as of that time." "In September 2009, well after [the] litigation was underway, counsel for [Tahoe Truckee] arranged to have the lease (Exhibit 57) executed by Budd Shaffer in the presence of a notary."
The trial court found that, assuming the validity of the lease, Tahoe Truckee "never intended to perform any lease obligations ... and that it did not use the claimed lease area for significant periods of time." It concluded that the leaseholder had abandoned the lease and the rights of the parties were governed by the easement and its historical uses.
The interpretation of a written instrument is solely a question of law unless the meaning turns on a question of fact. In that case, a review of the facts is subject to the substantial evidence rule and if the evidence is in conflict we are directed to decide on the basis of the inference or inferences that support the trial court. (Parsons v. Bristol Development Co. (1965) 62 Cal.2d 861 [44 Cal.Rptr. 767, 402 P.2d 839].) We proceed on that basis.
Tahoe Truckee has an express easement created by a reservation in a grant deed. The reservation provides for "an easement for ingress, egress, parking, storage, utilities over a portion of Parcel One ..., lying Easterly of the Northerly prolongation of the Westerly line of the land conveyed to Bud L. Shaffer, et ux., by deed recorded September 28, 1971 in Book 1374 at Page 361."
The trial court ruled that the portion referred to is the area shown on a survey map prepared by plaintiffs (Appen. A, post, at p. 96) for submission to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. The map describes the area as subject to an "easement for parking, ingress, egress, utilities and storage, in favor of Kings Beach ...," the exact terms of the easement, and shows both a paved
The trial court ruled that "`[w]hen the instrument of conveyance grants an easement in general terms, without specifying or limiting the extent of its use, the permissible use is determined in the first instance by the intention of the parties and the purpose of the grant. Once the easement has been used for a reasonable time, the extent of its use is established by the past use.' (6 Miller [&] Starr, Cal. Real Estate (3d ed. [2006]) § 15:56, [p. 186, fns. omitted,] emphasis added.) `Once the extent of an easement's use has been established, the easement owner cannot subsequently enlarge its character so as to materially increase the burden on the servient tenement.' ([Id.,] ... § 15:54[, p. 176, fn. omitted].)" This means that the trial court did not find that the express terms of the easement determined the extent of the use of the easement.
This case is analogous to Wilson v. Abrams (1969) 1 Cal.App.3d 1030 [82 Cal.Rptr. 272] (Wilson). Wilson involved a "`non-exclusive easement for the benefit of ... [a shopping center] for roadways, walkways, ingress and egress, public utilities, and motor vehicle parking, over ... [a] portion of Wilsons Property,'" language similar to the easement in this case. (Id. at pp. 1033-1034.) The court found that this language alone did not express the extent of motor vehicle parking on the servient tenement. (Id. at p. 1035.) What did show the extent was a map, incorporated in the easement document, that showed the location of "individual parking stalls, light stanchions, and
The trial court found that Tahoe Truckee "never intended to perform any lease obligations ... and that it did not use the claimed lease area for significant periods of time." It found that "[t]he conduct of [Tahoe Truckee], both before and after this dispute began, consistently demonstrated its intent to ignore and abandon whatever lease rights it claims exist under the lease entered decades before by its predecessors, and which lease was never performed by [Tahoe Truckee] or its predecessors." "Under all [the] circumstances, the court finds it reasonable that Rye did not undertake efforts to inquire further as to the existence or effect of the lease which defendants now claim to be valid."
Tahoe Truckee advances two arguments in response. First, it claims the lease area had been partially occupied since its creation and that an intent to abandon cannot be drawn from such an occupation. Second, it claims that the lease was simply not used for 22 years and that an intent to abandon cannot be drawn from mere disuse. We disagree.
As to disuse, although the evidence shows that some employees of Tahoe Truckee were unaware of the lease, the lease was signed in 1982 by Silvano Achiro, on behalf of Kings Beach (Tahoe Truckee), and the original of the lease (exhibit 57) was found in the files of Tahoe Truckee in 2008. As the trial court found, for 22 years, until the purchase by the Ryes, Tahoe Truckee paid no taxes on the property, as required by the terms of the lease, and was "`entirely indifferent as to what may become of it or as to who may thereafter possess it.'" (Martin v. Cassidy (1957) 149 Cal.App.2d 106, 110 [307 P.2d 981].) The trial court found that this showed a manifest indifference to the existence of the lease and permitted the inference that the lease was abandoned and not merely disused.
The judgment limiting the plaintiffs to the historic uses of the easement is affirmed. The parties shall bear their own costs on appeal. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.278(a)(5).)
Raye, P. J., and Nicholson, J., concurred.
