Easements are “nonpossessory interests in the land of another”; in other words, they are permissions that grant a person a right to use someone else’s land without owning that land. You can have easements to fish, to travel across the land, to maintain pipelines, and all sorts of other creative creations. Easements typically are created by an agreement; oftentimes, the person records it in the local record systems to make it clear to the world around that an easement is owed to someone. There’s a lesser-known practice called “prescription” that is not favored by the courts but exists nonetheless. Prescription is the practice of creating an easement through overt, open, and blatant use of the property as though an easement existed. The courts have found that “open, visible, and unmolested use of land [what we now call “hostile use”] for a period of time sufficient to acquire an easement by adverse user” will create an easement. Within that, there is an expectation: if you know about or should have known about someone using your land as though they had an easement, you are expected, by law, to put a stop to that use. Imagine a neighbor who really puts a burr under your saddle because they always cut across the corner of your property to get to their house because they just can’t be bothered to go the long way around. If you see them doing this and say nothing for 10 years, the law basically says, “we’re inferring that you are okay with the neighbors using the land this way because you let it happen for 10 years without stopping it despite knowing it was happening and will imply that there is an easement allowing them to use this land.” If the usage by the neighbor was clandestine? If they only crossed the area when they knew you were gone or in the middle of the night, the easement would not be created because it was not open and visible. If you put up a fence or a gate that stops them and they have to bring wire cutters to break the fence and drive across? The act of trying to stop them makes clear that you opposed their right, and it would be treated as a trespass rather than an implied permission.
There is a separate and opposite version of prescription as well — a person can terminate an easement through prescription. If someone owes an easement across their land and takes steps to block the use of the easement openly, notoriously, and hostilely for a period of 10 years, the easement ceases to exist. Said otherwise: imagine you owe your neighbor an access easement over your land; they can use your land to skip the long way around. You put up a gate and functionally block all access, and nobody complains for 10 years. After 10 years pass, the neighbor suddenly demands to start using that access right again. You can argue, though it may be difficult to prove, that the easement has been terminated through prescription because of the active and hostile blockade of the easement right. In essence, the law also expects that a person make use of their easement rights if they have them. If a person fails to make productive use of the easement for a long enough time and fails to enforce the right to use the easement when the servient estate starts to limit or block the use of the easement, then the courts can say, “you clearly didn’t want the easement and we’re implying from your actions that you two agreed to a termination of the easement.”