It's not the most critical opinion in the world, other than to the parties. There are two adjoining parcels by a river, and the only way to get to one of them is through an easement over the other. To minimize the intrusion on the dominant tenement (*fancy word*), the easement on behalf of the servient tenement (*ditto*) runs along the river.
But that has problems of its own. In 2002, flooding destroyed the riverbank and hence the easement, leading to litigation that was resolved in 2011, in which the trial court moved the easement a little bit inward from the riverbank. The goal, again, was to minimize the impact on the dominant tenement.
But floods will be floods. Then, in 2018, there was another flood, which made the new easement too difficult to traverse. Leading to new litigation, and a plethora of arguments about claim preclusion, issue preclusion, the nature of easements, etc. Imagine a really difficult property class combined with a really hard class on civil procedure. That's today's opinion.
Nonetheless, Justice Hull does a great job. His opinion seems sensible and entirely just -- as well as doctrinally correct. There's a new easement, this time (again) a little bit further inland. And unlike the trial court, the Court of Appeal doesn't make the owner of the servient tenement pay the million bucks or so it'd take to stabilize the riverbank so we don't see round three.
Hopefully this latest easement won't be washed away too. But if it does, well, that's life. Back to square one. Again.
For now, though: Justice.
