Federal Court Bars Prescriptive Easement Claims Against U.S. Over Landlocked Tennessee Property

MEMPHIS (LN) — U.S. District Judge J. Daniel Breen on April 24, 2026 granted the federal defendants’ motion to dismiss all claims against them, leaving the case to proceed solely against Drew T. Adams and Abbie G. Adams, who purchased the adjacent property in 2023 and subsequently built a fence blocking the plaintiffs’ only land access route.

The plaintiffs alleged they obtained a prescriptive easement over a levee path crossing the Adams Property that had served as the sole means of reaching their hunting land for 28 years. The path was constructed 1970s and uncle of plaintiff John R. Parks across land they once owned. The plaintiffs claimed the easement vested before the federal government acquired a conservation easement on the property in 2023 for $2.26 million.

The federal defendants argued that the Quiet Title Act bars claims against the United States based on adverse possession. The court agreed, citing the statute’s subsection (n), which states that nothing shall be construed to permit suits against the United States based upon adverse possession.

The court acknowledged a split among federal courts on whether the bar applies to claims that ripened before the government acquired title. But the court followed the approach in Hallauer v. Chicago Title Insurance Co., which held that the plain language of the statute bars all adverse possession claims regardless of when they accrued.

Even if the claim could survive that threshold, the court found the complaint failed to plausibly allege that use of the levee path was adverse rather than permissive. The plaintiffs’ response brief asserted use without permission for decades raised a presumption of adversity, but the court said it could not consider that argument because it was raised rather than the complaint.

The court also dismissed the Fifth Amendment takings claim against the federal defendants, finding the plaintiffs could not sustain a takings claim without first establishing a property interest of a prescriptive easement.

Count II, alleging an easement by law, was dismissed after the plaintiffs conceded dismissal of that count as to the Federal Defendants.

The case is John R. Parks et al. v. Drew T. Adams et al., No. 1:25-cv-01130-JDB-jay, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Eastern Division.