Hurlocker v. Medina
New Mexico Court of Appeals
878 P.2d 348 (1994)
After a subdivision developer split off a 2.2-acre parcel for itself (accessible by a private road) while conveying the rest of the lots elsewhere, that 2.2-acre parcel and an adjoining lot 13 eventually both ended up in the hands of the Bartons, who conveyed both parcels together to First Interstate Bank in 1982. In 1984 the Bank sold only lot 13, which eventually passed to the defendants, landlocking the 2.2-acre parcel; in 1992 the Bank conveyed the now-landlocked parcel to the plaintiff (Hurlocker) by special warranty deed, at only 50 percent of its unencumbered value given its landlocked status. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment, apparently reasoning that because the two parcels were never part of a single undivided tract, the unity-of-title element of an easement by necessity wasn't satisfied.
Whether unity of title, required to establish an easement by necessity, demands that the dominant and servient estates have originally been severed from a single undivided parcel of land.