Guilday, R. & L. v. Freed, S. ( 2022 )

J-A14025-22
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
SALLY FREED IN THE SUPERIOR COURT
OF PENNSYLVANIA
Appellee
v.
ROBERT E. GUILDAY AND LICIA E.
GUILDAY, HIS WIFE
Appellants
ROBERT E. GUILDAY AND LICIA E.
GUILDAY, HIS WIFE
Appellants
v.
SALLY FREED AND HENDRICK B.
WRIGHT, HIS HEIRS, DEVISEES,
LEGATEES, EXECUTORS,
ADMINISTRATORS, PERSONAL
REPRESENTATIVES, SUCCESSORS,
TRANSFEREES, ASSIGNS AND ALL
OTHER PERSONS HAVING INTEREST IN
THE PREMISES
Appellees No. 1523 MDA 2021
Appeal from the Judgment Entered March 17, 2022
In the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County
Civil Division at No.: 2015-11871; 2020-04203
BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., STABILE, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*
MEMORANDUM BY STABILE, J.: FILED: OCTOBER 20, 2022
Appellants Robert E. Guilday and Licia E. Guilday, husband and wife,
appeal from the March 17, 2022 judgment entered in the Court of Common
Pleas of Luzerne County (“trial court”) against them and in favor of Appellee
____________________________________________
* Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.
J-A14025-22
Sally Freed (“Ms. Freed”) following the denial of their post-trial motions. Upon
review, we affirm.
The facts and procedural history of this case are undisputed. 1 Briefly,
on September 12, 1990, Ms. Freed acquired the premises located at 2927
Lakeside Drive, Harveys Lake, Luzerne County and associated lakefront
property. On October 5, 2004, Ms. Freed purchased a second property when
she acquired from the Greater Wilkes-Barre Association for the Blind (the
“Blind Association”), via a quitclaim deed, the Blind Association’s 1/5 interest
in a portion of the lakebed of Harveys Lake adjacent to her property.2
Ms. Freed duly recorded this sale with the Luzerne County Recorder of Deeds
in Deed Book 3004, Page 251816.
On April 21, 2005, Appellants acquired from Kevin J. McHale
(“Mr. McHale”) a property, featuring a dock, adjacent to Ms. Freed’s property
in Harveys Lake. The properties shared a common boundary. Mr. McHale had
purchased the property from David Bailey, III and Ann Marie Bailey (the
“Baileys”) on May 21, 1998, who in turn had obtained the same from Leonard
Chesterfield and Mary Mohanco, n/k/a Mary Chesterfield on July 6, 1990. At
____________________________________________
1Unless otherwise stated, the facts are taken from the trial court’s July 8,
2021 and November 1, 2021 opinions.
2 The October 5, 2005 quitclaim deed noted that the lakebed property was
owned by Hendrick B. Wright, who died on September 2, 1881. Upon his
death, Henrick Wright devised the lakebed property to his five children, one
of whom was George B. Wright. When George Wright died on October 1,
1932, he conveyed his 1/5 interest in the lakebed to the Greater Wilkes-Barre
Association for the Blind.
-2-
J-A14025-22
the time of the April 14 sale, neither the deed from Mr. McHale to Appellants,
nor the deed from the Baileys to Mr. Hale described the portion of the lakebed
where the dock was located.
On October 21, 2015, Ms. Freed initiated an ejectment action, docketed
at 2015-11871 against Appellants (the “Ejectment Action”), alleging that,
since acquiring the property, Appellants have maintained a wooden dock
across the common boundary line that encroached upon her property. On
April 25, 2016, Appellants filed an answer, denying the averments of the
complaint and asserting new matter. In particular, Appellants claimed, inter
alia, a prescriptive easement and adverse possession to justify their continued
use of the dock. Appellants also brought counterclaims seeking to quiet title
and a declaratory judgment that they have a prescriptive easement over that
portion of the lakebed property on which their dock is situated. Appellants’
Answer, 4/25/16, at ¶¶ 28-37. On May 13, 2016, Ms. Freed replied to
Appellants’ new matter and answered the counterclaims.
While the Ejectment Action was pending, on March 18, 2020, Appellants
instituted a quiet title action against Ms. Freed and Hendrick B. Wright, his
heirs, devisees, legatees, executors, administrators, personal representatives,
successors, transferees, assigns and all other persons having interest in the
premises (the “Wright Defendants”) at docket 04203-2020 (“Quiet Title
Action”). Appellants claimed that, even though a part of their dock encroached
upon Ms. Freed’s lakebed property, they have a right to continue to use the
dock via the doctrine of adverse possession. In support, Appellants claimed
-3-
J-A14025-22
that they and their predecessors in interest—Mr. McHale and the Baileys—
used the dock continuously for over twenty-one years as of the date of the
complaint. Appellants’ Complaint, 3/18/20, at ¶¶ 9-11.
On April 29, 2020, Ms. Freed filed an answer, generally denying the
averments of the complaint and asserting new matter. On September 28,
2020, Ms. Freed amended her answer, raising new matter and asserting a
crossclaim for quiet title, based on adverse possession, against the Wright
Defendants. On January 27, 2021, following her unsuccessful attempts to
serve the Wright Defendants via publication, the trial court quieted title in
favor of Ms. Freed relating to the lakebed property that she purchased from
the Greater Wilkes-Barre Association for the Blind.3
On August 15, 2020, Appellants obtained from Mr. McHale a quitclaim
deed, whereby Mr. McHale transferred to them all rights obtained through his
open, hostile, continuous, notorious and exclusive use of dock encroaching
upon a portion of Ms. Freed’s lakebed property from May 21, 1998 until April
21, 2005. On December 15, 2020, Appellants obtained a nearly identical
quitclaim deed from the Baileys spanning the Baileys periods of possession.
On March 25, 2021, following the parties’ stipulation, the trial court
consolidated for purposes of trial the Ejectment Action and the Quiet Title
____________________________________________
3 Similarly, on March 26, 2021, the trial court also entered judgment in favor
of Appellants and against the Wright Defendants. We express no opinion on
the validity of the judgments entered against the Wright Defendants. As the
Wright Defendants did not participate below, they also are not a party to this
appeal.
-4-
J-A14025-22
Action. That day, this case proceeded to a bench trial, following which the
trial court denied relief to Appellants and concluded that their dock encroached
on the lakebed property owned by Ms. Freed.
On July 19, 2021, Appellants filed a post-trial motion, challenging
principally the trial court’s refusal to rely upon the post-dated quitclaim deeds
from Mr. McHale and the Baileys to allow tacking for purposes of establishing
adverse possession. The trial court denied the post-trial motion on November
1, 2021. Appellants timely appealed. The trial court directed Appellants to
file a Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) statement of errors complained of on appeal.
Appellants complied, asserting that the trial court erred in concluding that they
failed to establish tacking for purposes of proving adverse possession.
Separately, Appellants asserted that the trial court erred in quieting title to
the lakebed property in favor of Ms. Freed because she failed to prove adverse
possession vis-à-vis the Wright Defendants.
On appeal,4 Appellants raise two issues for our review, reproduced
verbatim as follows:
____________________________________________
4 We note that Appellants’ brief fails to comply with the briefing requirements
outlined in the Pennsylvania Rules of Appellate Procedure. Specifically, the
brief includes no citations to the record or to legal authority to support
Appellants’ claims. See Pa.R.A.P. 2119 (setting forth argument briefing
requirements, including “discussion and citation of authorities” and “reference
to the place in the record where the matter refers to appears”). The brief also
presents no meaningful legal analysis. Yet, despite these obvious and
substantial briefing deficiencies, we decline to find waiver and address the
merits of this appeal.
-5-
J-A14025-22
[I.] Does the filing of quitclaim deeds transferring use of the real
estate after the filing of the quiet title action, but referring to use
prior thereto, fulfill the requirements of tacking?
[II.] Did the trial court err in finding that Appellant[s] had no
standing because they were only adjoining owners and ignoring
their encroachment upon [Ms. Freed’s] claim.
Appellants’ Brief at 1.
At the core, Appellants take exception to the trial court’s determination
that they did not establish adverse possession of the disputed lakebed
property upon which their dock encroached. They argue that the trial court
erred in concluding that they could not tack the periods of possession of prior
owners onto their own period of possession because no deed in the chain of
title at the time of the 2005 conveyance from Mr. McHale to Appellants
described or referenced the disputed the lakebed property.
Following a bench trial concerning adverse possession, the trial court’s
“findings of fact will not be disturbed absent an abuse of discretion, a
capricious disbelief of the evidence, or a lack of evidentiary support on the
record for the findings.” Lilly v. Markvan, 763 A.2d 370, 372 (Pa. 2000).
“We will reverse the trial court only if its findings of fact are not supported by
competent evidence in the record or if its findings are premised on an error of
law.” Wyatt Inc. v. Citizens Bank of Pa., 976 A.2d 557, 564 (Pa. Super.
2009) (citation omitted). Where, as here, the appellants claim legal error in
the application of the doctrine of adverse possession, they raise “a question
of law, over which our standard of review is de novo and our scope of review
is plenary.” City of Philadelphia v. Galdo, 217 A.3d 811, 817 (Pa. 2019).
-6-
J-A14025-22
“Adverse possession is an extraordinary doctrine that permits one to
achieve ownership of another's real property by operation of law.” Id. at 820.
“The doctrine is dependent upon an individual’s possession of another’s
property for an enumerated period of time authorized by statute.” Id.; see
also 68 P.S.A. §§ 81-88 (governing claims by adverse possession); and 42
Pa.C.S.A. § 5530 (setting forth a twenty-one-year-limitations period in actions
for the possession of real property). Through these statutes, the General
Assembly “encourages those who diligently develop and improve the land as
against those who are content to hold the bare legal title inactively for many
years.” Galdo, 217 A.3d at 820.
Thus, in Pennsylvania, one who claims title by adverse possession
must prove actual, continuous, exclusive, visible, notorious,
distinct and hostile possession of the land for twenty-one years.
. . . However, under certain circumstances, the periods of
possession of prior owners may be added on to the period of
possession of the present owners [by] a process, called “tacking”
. . . but only where there is privity between [successive
occupants]. For [the Court’s] purposes, “privity” refers to a
succession of relationship to the same thing, whether created by
deed or other acts or by operation of law.
Northern Forests II, Inc. v. Keta Realty Co., 130 A.3d 19, 35 (Pa. Super.
2015) (quoting Baylor v. Soska, 658 A.2d 743, 744-45 (Pa. 1995)), appeal
denied 158 A.3d 1237 (Pa. 2016).
In Baylor, Robert and Lillian Baylor (“the Baylors”) claimed that they
held the disputed land, via adverse possession, by tacking the period that their
predecessor in title held the disputed land. Baylor, 658 A.2d at 743. The
-7-
J-A14025-22
Supreme Court held that the Baylors could not tack the period of time in which
their predecessor in title held the disputed land, because the predecessor
failed to identify the disputed land in her deed to the Baylors.
The only method by which an adverse possessor may convey the
title asserted by adverse possession is to describe in the
instrument of conveyance[,] by means minimally acceptable for
conveyancing of realty[,] that which is intended to be conveyed.
In this case, the predecessor in title did not meet this requirement
so far as regards the disputed tract.
Id. at 746. The Supreme Court reasoned:
[t]here is good reason for this requirement. Interested parties
have a right to discern from the record the state of the title of any
parcel of land. If tacking were to be permitted because of vague,
undefined “circumstances,” there could and most likely would be
no way for one not a party to the conveyance to know this. But
the law mandates that a person asserting a claim of adverse
possession make this assertion openly and notoriously to all the
world. There must be no secret that the adverse possessor is
asserting a claim to the land in question. If the adverse
possessor’s claim is to be passed on to a successor in title,
therefore, there must be some objective indicia of record by which
it can be discerned with some degree of certainty that a claim of
title by adverse possession is being made and that the duration of
this claim has been passed on to a successor in title.
Id. at 745–46 (citation omitted). Thus, in order to tack the time in possession
of one’s predecessors for purposes of acquiring title to land, the subsequent
possessor must receive a deed describing the metes and bounds of the land
in question. The “acceptance of a deed describing boundary lines confines the
premises conveyed to the area within the boundaries, and such a deed does
not convey inchoate rights acquired by incompleted adverse possession.
Each predecessor must have claimed title to the property in dispute and have
-8-
J-A14025-22
purported to include it.” Watkins v. Watkins, 775 A.2d 841, 846–47 (Pa.
Super. 2001) (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
The issue here is straightforward: whether Appellants established
adverse possession of the portion of the lakebed property upon which their
dock encroached. Our review of the record discloses that at the time
Appellants purchased their property, no deed in Appellants’ chain of title
“describe[d] in the instrument of conveyance[,] by means minimally
acceptable for conveyancing the realty[,] that which [was] intended to be
conveyed[,]” i.e., the portion of Ms. Freed’s lakebed property upon which
Appellant’s dock encroached. See Baylor, 658 A.2d at 746; accord Zeglin
v. Gahagen, 812 A.2d 558, 565 (Pa. 2002) (recognizing that in Baylor, the
Supreme Court “dismissed the portion of the privity rules permitting the
tacking based on acts or circumstances extrinsic to written deeds.”).
As discussed, a portion of Appellants’ dock encroached on Ms. Freed’s
lakebed property. Appellants’ 2020 complaint alleged that they acquired title
to that portion of Ms. Freed’s property via adverse possession. Appellants,
however, did not own their property for twenty-one years, as they purchased
it in 2005. Thus, to circumvent this limitation, they sought to add the periods
of possession of prior owners—Mr. McHale and the Baileys—onto their period
of possession. Recognizing that their 2005 deed did not describe or reference
the disputed lakebed property, Appellants obtained and recorded in 2020
post-dated quitclaim deeds from Mr. McHale and the Baileys describing the
-9-
J-A14025-22
lakebed property.5 The trial court found the post-dated quitclaim deeds were
ineffective, because they sought to include that which was absent in the
original deeds at the time of conveyance. The court explained that for
Appellants to “successfully tack their period of possession onto the prior
owners, the deed received when they bought the property from [Mr.] McHale
in April 2005 would have had to contain a description of the portion of the
lakebed at issue. It did not and in this case it is fatal.” Trial Court Opinion,
11/1/21, at 14. This fatal defect in the chain of title was not cured when
Appellants obtained the 2020 quitclaim deeds. As the trial court noted, they
obtained the quitclaim deed from the Baileys after they obtained the quitclaim
deed from Mr. McHale. Critically, the Baileys issued a quitclaim deed directly
to Appellants, rather than to Mr. McHale. Thus, the 2020 quitclaim deeds did
not follow the chain of title. Thus, without tacking, Appellants cannot establish
privity between themselves and their predecessors in title to satisfy the
twenty-one-year period of possession necessary to show title through adverse
possession. See Northern Forests II, Inc., 130 A.3d at 35. Accordingly,
Appellants’ quiet title action must fail.6
____________________________________________
5This occurred at least five months after the initiation of the Quiet Title Action
and nearly five years after the Ejectment Action.
6 Insofar Appellants relies upon Freed v. Harveys Lake Borough Zoning
Hearing Bd., 2008 WL 9398599 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2008) (unpublished
memorandum), for the argument that it settled or affected ownership of
lakebed properties, the reliance is misplaced. The Commonwealth Court
decision is inapplicable sub judice because it involved an interpretation of a
local ordinance and did not settle deed or title disputes.
- 10 -
J-A14025-22
We next turn to Appellants’ second argument that the trial court erred
in concluding that they lacked standing to challenge Ms. Freed’s adverse
possession claim against the Wright Defendants. We perceive this argument
to be irrelevant and without merit. The trial court did not decide whether Ms.
Freed established adverse possession via-a-vis the Wright Defendants.
Indeed, the trial court explained, “[n]owhere in this court’s findings of fact
and conclusions of law does this court suggest that [Ms. Freed] established
twenty-one years of adverse use.” Trial Court Opinion, 11/1/21, at 18
(unnecessary capitalizations omitted). The trial court merely determined that
Appellants failed to quiet title in the lakebed property because they could not
prove adverse possession via tacking. The court observed:
[Appellants] were aware of the quitclaim deed from the Blind
Association and did not object at the time of trial. It is true that
the quitclaim deed from the Blind Association to [Ms.] Freed
conveyed a one-fifth interest in the portion of the lakebed
specifically described in the deed; this interest is more than
[Appellants] have in the portion of the property where their dock
is located which encroaches on [Ms.] Freed’s property. The one-
fifth interest could possibly create problems down the road for
[Ms. Freed] if someone with more than one-fifth interest files a
suit in ejectment against [her] but that is for another day.
Id. at 16-17 (footnote omitted). Finally, as noted earlier, prior to trial,
Ms. Freed—via default—quieted title against the Wright Defendants.
Accordingly, Appellants are not entitled to relief.
In sum, we cannot conclude that the trial court erred in denying
Appellants’ quiet title claim. Even though they possessed the dock
encroaching upon Ms. Freed’s property since 2005, they fell short of the
- 11 -
J-A14025-22
required twenty-one-year period necessary to establish adverse possession.
Appellants also could not overcome the time limitation because there was no
reference to the disputed portion of the lakebed property in any deed in the
chain of title, much less the deed conveying the property to Appellants in
2005. Their subsequent efforts to obtain post-dated quitclaim deeds were
futile. As a result, Appellants failed to establish privity between themselves
and their predecessors in title for purposes of establishing adverse possession
by tacking. We therefore affirm the trial court’s March 17, 2022 judgment.
Judgment affirmed.
Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 10/20/2022
- 12 -