Eaton Peabody

Trial victory for Jon Huntington in Michael F. Becker and Beverly J. Becker, Trustee v. Owen and Barbara Craighead, d/b/a Mount Desert Campground, Inc., Maine Superior Court, Kennebec County, Docket No. AP-02-19.

Judgment for defendants represented by Mr. Huntington was recently entered in this case after a trial in Superior Court in February before Justice S. Kirk Studstrup. At the two-day trial, the plaintiffs’ claimed that a floating dock installed seasonally on the coast of Maine and maintained by Mr. Huntington’s clients as part of their business interfered with access to open water from the plaintiffs’ property, next door to the campground, and therefore was enjoinable as a common law nuisance. The plaintiffs presented the testimony of a surveyor who measured and mapped water depths in the cove shared by the parties and the clearances between the defendants’ dock and the rocks and shorelines adjacent to it. Among the witnesses called by Mr. Huntington for the defense was a former harbormaster from the area who testified that the dock was not a navigational hazard for a prudent mariner.

In denying the plaintiffs’ claim, the court applied the common law of private nuisance in Maine. It held that the plaintiffs had failed to prove that any interference with the plaintiffs’ access resulting from the uses and location of the dock was unreasonable. In Mr Huntington’s view, the issues at the trial were intensively factual, and when all the facts related to the cove, the tides, the history, and the uses were presented and considered, the court concluded that there was no good reason to require a change in the dock under the circumstances. The complete decision can be reviewed here.