Most cases that reach the New York Court of Appeals arrive with a constitutional question or a large sum of money. Genesee County Fish & Game Protective Assn., Inc. v Sullivan arrived with half of a two-lane private road in western New York. On Oct. 22, the state’s highest court gave that half to the fish-and-game club.
The unsigned memorandum, 2026 NY Slip Op 06168, runs barely a page. The vote was 5–2. Judges Garcia, Singas, Cannataro, Troutman and Halligan joined the majority. Judge Jenny Rivera wrote a long dissent, joined by Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson.
The road
According to the court, the plaintiff is a conservation association incorporated in 1909. It owns a 200-acre parcel in Genesee County, used for recreation by about 1,500 members, 21 of whom live there permanently. To the east lies a 45-acre parcel owned by Capri Dix, a former member of the association, which she and her husband, William Dix, use for recreation.
Godfrey’s Pond Road runs between them, and the property line runs down its center. The association has owned the western half since 1932. The Dixes and their predecessors have held title to the eastern half since at least 1949. The road, as the Appellate Division put it, provides “the only access to the property for plaintiff’s members, emergency services vehicles, and delivery services.”
For most of that time, nobody seemed to care where the center line fell. According to Judge Rivera’s dissent, Ms. Dix’s mother, grandmother, great-aunt and great-grandfather were all association members. Relatives rode horses on the road and on the club’s trails. Her great-grandfather, Vincent Frens, was described by the association as an extremely close friend of many members. He let the club take gravel from a pit on his land to patch the road and let members hunt on his property.
The falling out
That ended in 2021. The dissent says the Dixes came to believe club members were improperly entering their land, obtained a survey, and told the association they owned the eastern half of the road. They turned down an offer from the association to buy it. The majority, quoting the Appellate Division, describes “several provocative actions primarily taken by defendants and members of their family, including blocking the eastern half of the road with tree trunks,” and an encounter between club members and the Dixes that required police intervention.
The association sued, claiming title to the eastern half by adverse possession, the old doctrine under which someone who openly, exclusively and hostilely occupies land for at least 10 years can take title from the record owner. The Dixes counterclaimed for trespass.
Supreme Court granted the association summary judgment. In 2025, the Fourth Department affirmed, 3–2 (239 AD3d 1245). Justices DelConte and Hannah dissented, finding triable questions of fact. The two dissents gave the Dixes an appeal as of right.
The majority
The Court of Appeals agreed with the courts below “on the unique facts of this case.” The decisive evidence, the court said, was that “it was only plaintiff that had plowed, patched, paved, repaired, and otherwise maintained the entire road for decades.” The Dixes, it held, raised no triable issue of fact.
The court acknowledged that adverse possession is “not a favored method of procuring title,” quoting a 1920 decision. But it also called the doctrine a “necessary means of clearing disputed titles” serving an “important policy of repose.” The memorandum’s last sentence is its shortest: “It is time for repose here.”
The dissent
Judge Rivera’s dissent is many times the length of the majority. “The genesis of this litigation is a property dispute between neighbors,” she began, “with plaintiff now claiming title by adverse possession to defendants’ land.”
Her argument rests on two points. First, summary judgment is a “drastic remedy,” and courts must draw every inference in favor of the losing side. Second, adverse possession is “highly disfavored.” She noted that the Legislature tightened the statute in 2008 to discourage claims to land the claimant knows belongs to someone else.
The key element, in her view, is hostility. Under the court’s own precedent, a close and cooperative relationship between owner and possessor can imply permission and defeat the usual presumption that possession is hostile. A road used for decades by friendly neighbors, some of them club members themselves, with gravel supplied by the owner’s family, at least raises a question of fact about permission. “Those questions may only be resolved by the trier of fact,” she wrote. She would have sent the case back for trial.
Judge Rivera agreed that repose “is a worthy goal.” But she wrote that it “is not an appropriate justification to excuse plaintiff’s failure to establish by clear and convincing evidence” its claim on “a summary judgment record of mutual use and enjoyment of the property by these neighbors and their predecessors.”
What it means
The holding is narrow, and the majority said so. For property lawyers, the case is a reminder that the person who plows the road may in time own it. For neighbors, the dissent is a reminder that friendliness itself can become evidence.
John M. Wells represented the Dixes and John F. Whiting the association. The order was affirmed with costs.
Featured image: The New York Court of Appeals building in Albany. Photo by Bmzuckerman via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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