David called me before lunch.
“Have you seen page three?”
“I’m opening it now.”
“Read the amended request for relief.”
I found it.
The HOA was no longer seeking only confirmation of an existing prescriptive easement.
It was asking the court to grant a permanent express easement across the road corridor as part of the final resolution.
I read the paragraph twice.
“They want the judge to give them an easement.”
“Yes.”
“Even if they can’t prove the one they claim already exists?”
“That appears to be their fallback strategy.”
“Can they do that?”
“They can ask. Whether they’re legally entitled to that relief is a separate matter.”
“What’s their theory?”
“Established access, historical reliance, and community necessity. They’re trying to frame the situation so the court sees permanent access as the only fair outcome.”
I sat at my kitchen table.
“They’re counting on the fact that 96 families use the road.”
“Precisely.”
“And they’re asking the court to examine the complete title history.”
“That comes with the territory.”
I looked at the folder beside me.
The 1971 plat.
The chain of title.
The 1994 permission letter.
The county maintenance records.
The photographs.
Everything the board had neglected to investigate.
“They’re inviting the judge to look at all of it.”
“Yes.”
I leaned back.
“Margaret just made this worse for herself.”
David didn’t laugh.
“She may have. But don’t celebrate. We’ll need a complete, careful presentation.”
We spent the next several weeks preparing.
David contacted the county roads department.
The response confirmed that maintenance responsibility had shifted informally from the county to the HOA in the late 1990s. The files contained no accompanying grant of an easement and no formal road dedication establishing Cedarwood Ridge’s ownership of the corridor.
That fact mattered.
The HOA could prove it had spent money maintaining the pavement.
It could not point to a county record transferring ownership of the underlying land.
We gathered the old deeds.
Every transaction traced the corridor as part of the farm parcel.
We worked on authentication of the permission letter and sought the relevant association records.
The records established that the document wasn’t something I’d invented after the lawsuit.
