a. This case is based on the doctrine of adverse possession. What is that?
b. What are the requirements?
c. This is crazy! Why should someone get title to land by cheating?
d. This case perfectly proves the merit of the policy. How?
e. But the rule requires the possessor to demonstrate continuous possession for the statutory period. This family only showed up in fair weather, for a month.
In 1931, Rose Ray purchased a cottage in a mountain-top resort town in the Adirondacks, agreeing to rent the land on which the structure stood. The long-term lease required her to pay the real estate taxes and provided that when the tenancy ended, the landlord would buy back the cottage at fair market value. In 1960, the landlord terminated the lease of everyone in the town, so Ray and all other residents left. She died in 1962, without ever getting a penny for the cottage. The next year, Mt. Beacon Incline Lands, Inc. bought all rights to the abandoned 156-acre resort.
Robert and Margaret Ray, the son and daughter-in-law of Rose Ray, reentered the cottage and began to use it one month per year, every summer from 1963 to 1988. They paid taxes, insured the property, installed utilities, and posted "no trespassing" signs.
In 1978, Beacon Hudson bought the resort in a tax foreclosure sale. Finally, in 1988, the Rays filed suit, claiming title to the cottage by adverse possession. Beacon Hudson counter-claimed, seeking to eject the Rays. The trial court ruled for the couple. The appellate court reversed, stating that the Rays had been absent too frequently to achieve adverse possession. The Rays appealed to New York's highest court.