OWLS HEAD, Maine — Residents will be asked next month whether the town should spend another $25,000 to continue its defense of a lawsuit that seeks to erase its easement across waterfront land owned by a New York couple.
A special town meeting has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 17, at the community building.
Selectman Richard Carver said Monday the town has spent about $85,000 thus far to defend itself in the case filed in November 2011 by Darlene F. and Lewis M. Edwards III of Saugerties, New York.
Residents twice have voted at town meetings to support spending money to defend the town’s interests. Many of the residents who spoke at those meetings said the town needed to send a message to people from out of state who own property near the water that the town also has rights.
Justice Jeffrey Hjelm ruled in July that the neighbors and the town of Owls Head have the right to cross a 300-foot-long slice of the Edwardses’ waterfront property through a public easement. The couple appealed that superior court ruling in August to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, arguing that the easement does not exist and that the land in question is their driveway.
The Edwardses purchased the 1.7-acre lot at the end of Coopers Beach Road in March 2011 for $274,300 after a bank foreclosed on the previous owners. Coopers Beach Road runs from North Shore Drive to near the harbor.
In November 2011, they filed a lawsuit claiming there was no easement and that neighbors were trespassing.
“Homeowners, both year-round and seasonal, have developed strong friendships with each other. As an aspect of the relationships among them, they sometimes walk on or otherwise use each other’s property. Families visited with each other, and there were neighborhood parties and events,” Hjelm stated in his ruling, also citing property records that a public easement existed.
He stated that use of the beach by local residents was a long-standing practice, ruling that the record shows the neighbors have the right to use the intertidal area of the beach that the Edwardses own, for bathing and boating purposes.
The Edwardses also filed a lawsuit against their title insurance company. That case remains pending before the Maine Business and Consumer Court in Portland and no hearings are scheduled as of Monday, according to a court official.