In April, 2016 the Knox County Superior Court confirmed the title held by Eaton Peabody’s clients to a strip of waterfront property at Pleasant Beach, South Thomaston, Knox County, Maine after a two day trial held in March, 2016. Eaton Peabody partners, Judy Metcalf and Ryan Dumais, represented the prevailing parties. From the clients’ perspective, there should never have been a challenge to their title. They had lived on the land since 1975 and, indeed the principal cottage had been built generations earlier by their great grandfather. Nonetheless, their neighbor was determined to wrest title to the land (a parcel encompassing 35 feet of water frontage, the clients’ driveway, a portion of their front lawn and a parking area loaned to area lobstermen) away from Eaton Peabody’s clients. Arguing theories such as abandoned streets, discontinued streets, paper streets, after required title – through release deeds obtained a year after the neighbor had sued Eaton Peabody’s clients -and adverse possession, the neighbor was determined to grab this land which he readily acknowledged he never thought he owned.
Dumais and Metcalf were as determined. After the neighbor’s primary justification for claiming ownership of Eaton Peabody’s clients’ property, the paper streets claim, was defeated by Judy Metcalf and Ryan Dumais at the summary judgment stage, a trial proceeded. As a consequence of the clear presentation of evidence at trial, the clients’ title and right of ownership was confirmed.