Chris and Mike also made regular trips to Connecticut’s Housing and Bankruptcy courts for the eviction and bankruptcy work that sometimes accompanies foreclosure litigation. As Chris’s portfolio of work shifted in the direction of foreclosures of non-owner-occupied investment properties and commercial loans, the litigation became more complicated, sometimes involving intensive discovery and motion practice, appellate work, adversarial proceedings in bankruptcy court.
In 2015, Chris received a call from a prospective client whose neighbor, a farmer, had installed a fence that completely blocked access to an old farm road that the client had used for decades to access his business and a rental property, both of which he owned. The dispute centered on who had the rights and obligations to use and maintain the farm road easement.
For the last decade, Chris and KKC’s litigation department has handled dozens of quiet title matters, boundary disputes and easement disputes. Many of these cases settle before a lawsuit is filed, others shortly after litigation is commenced, though some span multiple years and require significant motion practice, discovery, expert testimony and trial work.
A quick settlement is ideal, but if that cannot be achieved, KKC has litigated hundreds of cases to judgment, with occasional trips to the appellate court to protect a hard-fought win at the trial court level.
KKC also provides guidance and has litigated real estate partition actions, specific performance, nuisance, and adverse possession cases. Perhaps the most frequent call Chris Bowen receives concerns confusion or disputes over the location of a boundary line.
Chris routinely counsels owners who have discovered they are encroaching on their neighbor’s land, or their neighbor is encroaching on their land. These problems are often not discovered until years or decades after a client has purchased their property, and after significant landscaping, hardscaping, or even homes/garages have been built on the wrong side of the boundary line. Owners often discover these problems when they or an abutting neighbor have their land surveyed. In these situations, Chris provides guidance on the legal merits of an adverse possession or prescriptive easement claims and counsels on the pros and cons of license agreements, leases, easement agreements, lot line adjustments, and sale/purchase of a parcel along the common boundary. Perhaps more important than a sometimes-academic conversation about the legal merits of any given case is the guidance Chris provides on the costs, both financial and emotional, as well as the practical benefits of protracted litigation.
KKC has been appointed by Connecticut’s largest title insurance company to fix or litigate multiple conveyancing mistakes or defects, such as a deed that referenced an incorrect subdivision map or failed to include the correct property descriptions. Often these defects interfere with an owner’s ability to sell their real estate or borrow against it. They also impair the collateral of the bank that financed the development, purchase, or improvements to the property. (KKC has also been retained to represent lenders who have defects in the property descriptions attached to their mortgages.)
KKC has a deep bench of non-litigation real estate and land use attorneys, like Will Broneill and Dory Famiglietti, with whom Mike and Chris regularly consult when facing thorny title and work with when it comes time to reduce a settlement agreement to an easement or license agreement or to convey land.
Whether you are a transactional real estate attorney, title insurer, or surveyor who would like to refer a case, or are the actual property owner, please contact Chris Bowen and KKC should you require assistance with a real estate dispute.