Encroachment Removal and Prescriptive Easement

A property owner sued to compel a neighbor to remove a structure built partially on the owner's land, citing a survey that confirmed the encroachment, but the lower court dismissed the claim, reasoning that because the structure was built more than thirty years prior to the suit, the right to compel removal was extinguished by the thirty-year prescriptive period, even though the neighbor had never possessed the encroached-upon strip of land as an owner. The high court quashed the lower court's decision, holding that the mere, passive maintenance of an encroachment, without any assertion of ownership over the adjacent land, is insufficient to establish the necessary adverse possession required to acquire title to the disputed strip through prescription; therefore, the prescriptive period for acquiring ownership of the strip had not begun to run against the true owner.