J. Daniel Mahoney, Edward J. Mahoney, Patrick J. Mahoney v. Tara, LLC

Summary

The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's judgment that plaintiffs did not acquire title to a disputed beach and adjacent strip of land by adverse possession or acquiescence, though it reached that result partly on different reasoning. The court held that an adverse possessor's own quiet-title suit does not toll the fifteen-year limitations statute; only a claim to possession by the title owner does. However, defendant's January 2008 motion to dismiss asserting ownership constituted an 'unequivocal act of ownership' under Vermont's notice-pleading standard that tolled the statute before fifteen years had run. The court also upheld the trial court's findings that plaintiffs' predecessors did not acquire the land by acquiescence before 1949 and that the charitable-use exemption of 12 V.S.A. § 462 covered Vermont Catholic Charities' entire ownership of the Camp Tara property.