Fraudulent Easement Grants in Jamaica: Fake Rights of Way and Access Road Claims

• Easements give the holder a right to use another person’s land for a defined purpose.
• Forged easement grants have been registered at the NLA, burdening land without the owner’s consent.
• False claims of prescriptive easement by long use have been used to claim access rights over neighbour’s land.
• An easement on the title reduces the value and marketability of the servient tenement.
• Property owners who discover a falsely registered easement should seek urgent legal advice to have it removed.

An easement is a right exercisable over one parcel of land — the servient tenement — for the benefit of another parcel — the dominant tenement. Common easements in Jamaica include rights of way over an access road, rights to run pipes or cables beneath a neighbouring parcel, and rights to draw water from a well on adjacent land. Easements can be expressly granted, can arise by implication from a land transaction, or can be acquired by long, continuous, and uninterrupted use under the doctrine of prescription. Each of these routes to easement creation has been exploited fraudulently. Forged express grants have been registered at the NLA, burdening a property owner’s land with an easement they never consented to. False claims of long use have been asserted in proceedings designed to establish a prescriptive easement over a neighbour’s land. And properties have been sold with false representations about the access rights available to the buyer.

Impact on Property Value and Title

A property burdened by a registered easement is a property whose owner’s free use is restricted, and that restriction is reflected in the property’s value and its attractiveness to prospective buyers. An easement that allows a neighbour to drive across a residential property, or that gives utility companies the right to enter the land for maintenance purposes, is a material incumbrance. Where such an easement has been fraudulently registered — without the servient owner’s knowledge or consent — the owner has both suffered a financial loss through the reduction in their property’s value and faces an ongoing interference with their enjoyment of the land. Discovering such an easement typically requires a title search, since the burdened owner may not receive notice of the registration in the normal course of events.

Challenging and Removing Fraudulent Easements

A property owner who discovers that a fraudulent easement has been registered against their title should seek urgent legal advice. An application can be made to the Supreme Court of Jamaica for a declaration that the easement is void, together with an order for rectification of the register to remove it. Where the easement was created by a forged document, the owner may also have a claim for damages against any person who registered or used the fraudulent instrument. In the interim, a caveat can be lodged at the NLA to prevent any further dealings under or in reliance on the fraudulent easement. Buyers who discover undisclosed easements after completing a purchase may have claims against the seller for non-disclosure, and against the attorney who failed to identify the easement in the pre-completion title search.

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