The Properties, the People, and a Problem Nobody Knew About

The story of Romero v. Shih begins not with a legal dispute, but with a driveway that nobody ever questioned — for almost seventy years. In the early 1940s, Edwin and Ann Cutler purchased two adjacent parcels of land in Sierra Madre, a small city in the foothills of Los Angeles County. They built a home on the eastern parcel and, in doing so, constructed a driveway and garden planter that physically crossed onto the western parcel by roughly eight feet. The wall, the fence, the planter, the driveway — all of it was built without anyone drawing the line precisely where the law said it should be. For decades, it simply did not matter. The Cutlers owned both lots.

In 1986, the Cutlers sold the western parcel. The deed made no mention of the encroaching driveway. No easement was expressly reserved. Decades passed, the properties changed hands, and the driveway kept being used as a driveway — because that is what it had always been.¹

In 2014, two separate transactions brought two separate families into what would become one of the most significant property rights disputes in California in a generation. Cesar and Tatana Spicakova Romero purchased the western parcel — the one with the legal ownership of that disputed eight-foot strip. Li-Chuan Shih and Tun-Jen Ko purchased the eastern parcel — the one with the driveway that had been sitting on that strip for decades. Neither couple had been told about any encroachments or boundary disputes. Neither seller had disclosed anything. Neither buyer had commissioned a boundary survey before closing.²

The Discovery That Triggered Everything

About a year after moving in, Cesar Romero was doing what many new homeowners do: planning improvements to his yard. He went outside with a measuring tape to sketch out a landscaping project. What he found stopped him cold. The yard was measurably narrower than the property records and purchase documents suggested it should be. He hired a licensed surveyor. The survey confirmed it: the neighbor's concrete block wall, garden planter, and entire driveway were sitting on Romero land.²

The Romeros filed suit against the Shih-Kos. Their position was straightforward under the law: this is our property, the encroachments are a trespass, remove them and pay damages. The Shih-Kos responded with a cross-complaint arguing that when the Cutlers originally divided and sold the western parcel back in 1986, they had implicitly intended for the eastern parcel to retain the right to use that driveway area. In legal terms: they claimed an implied easement. As an alternative, they asked the court to create an equitable easement — a court-fashioned remedy that would compensate the Romeros for the burden placed on their property while allowing the driveway to remain.²

The Legal Question at the Heart of the Case

To understand why this case drew attention from property law practitioners throughout California, it helps to understand what was actually being argued — and what the law said before this ruling.

What Is an Implied Easement?

California law recognizes that easements — the legal right to use someone else's land for a specific purpose — do not always need to be spelled out in writing. When a single owner divides a property into two parcels, and one parcel has historically been used in a way that benefits or burdens the other, the courts may recognize an "implied easement" based on what the parties clearly intended, even if they never put it in a deed.³

The traditional requirements for an implied easement in California are: (1) the properties were once under common ownership; (2) the easement is reasonably necessary to the enjoyment of the dominant parcel; and (3) the existing use at the time of division was of such a character that the parties must have intended for it to continue.³

The Problem the Court of Appeal Created

The Court of Appeal's reversal rested on a specific concern: the Shih-Kos were not just claiming a shared right-of-way or a utility access strip — their driveway took up essentially the entire eight-foot disputed area, effectively denying the Romeros any practical use of their own land in that strip. The appellate court concluded that this level of exclusivity could only be created by a written instrument. It drew from case law on prescriptive easements — which require adverse, continuous, open, and exclusive use over five years, plus payment of taxes on the disputed land — and applied that logic to implied easements as well.⁴

The practical consequence of that ruling: no California property owner whose driveway, structure, or improvement encroaches on a neighbor's land could ever establish a right to keep it there based on implied intent alone, no matter how clear the historical evidence. The only option would be formal adverse possession — a much harder standard to meet.

What the Supreme Court Actually Decided

The California Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, rejected the Court of Appeal's reasoning and drew a clear distinction between prescriptive easements and implied easements. Prescriptive easements arise from unauthorized use — someone uses land without permission long enough to acquire a legal right. Implied easements, by contrast, arise from a real estate transaction, and their purpose is entirely different: to give effect to what the original parties actually intended when they divided property and sold it.⁵

The Court held that there is no blanket prohibition against an implied easement that is effectively exclusive. What matters is the evidence — specifically, whether the parties to the original transaction in 1986 understood and intended that the driveway would continue to serve the eastern parcel permanently. The Court found the trial court's conclusions were supported by the evidence and remanded for the Court of Appeal to reconsider that question under the correct legal standard.⁵

What This Case Reveals About Real Estate Transactions in Southern California

Romero v. Shih is a court opinion, but it is also something else: a concrete illustration of how disputes that cost years of litigation and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees routinely begin with the most mundane moments — a yard measurement, a renovation project, a survey done for the first time in thirty years.

The Non-Disclosure Problem

California law places significant obligations on sellers of residential property to disclose known material facts — including surveys, easements, encroachments, and boundary disputes — in the Transfer Disclosure Statement and the Seller Property Questionnaire. The purchase agreements used by both parties in this case explicitly asked about these issues and disclosed nothing.²

Whether the sellers in 1986 and 2014 knew about the encroachment is a factual question this case never fully resolved. But the legal lesson is plain: a disclosure obligation exists regardless of how old the encroachment is or how long ago the boundary was misdrawn. If a seller knows — or should know — that a structure on or near the property line has never been surveyed, that fact can be a material one. California's failure-to-disclose laws exist precisely because buyers cannot be expected to discover what they have no reasonable way to find.

The Survey Problem

Standard real estate purchase transactions in California do not automatically require a boundary survey. A title report will show recorded easements and liens, but it will not tell a buyer whether the physical structures on or adjacent to a property conform to the legal boundary lines. The only way to know that is a licensed boundary survey — and in a competitive market where buyers waive contingencies and close quickly, surveys are routinely skipped.

The Romeros followed the standard process. They bought a property, the deal closed, and they moved in. Nothing in the transaction indicated there was anything to worry about. One year later, they discovered they were in a legal dispute with their neighbor over eight feet of land — a dispute that would eventually be decided by the highest court in the state.

The Title and Documentation Gap

One of the most important takeaways from the Supreme Court's reasoning is this: an easement that does not appear in any deed, title report, or recorded document can still be legally enforceable against a buyer who had no knowledge of it. The Court was careful to note that the evidentiary standard is high — but high does not mean impossible. Where historical use is long-standing, physical evidence is clear, and the circumstances at the time of the original property division strongly suggest the parties understood the arrangement, courts will give effect to that intent.

For buyers, sellers, and their attorneys in Los Angeles County and throughout Southern California, this means that the recorded documents represent the beginning of due diligence — not the end of it.

How DiJulio Law Group Approaches Easement and Boundary Disputes

Boundary disputes and easement cases in Southern California involve layers of legal analysis: historical chain of title, the physical facts on the ground, applicable statutes, and — after Romero v. Shih — a clearer but demanding standard for implied easement claims. For homeowners, the stakes are personal and often significant. An eight-foot strip of land may sound like a minor matter until it determines whether a driveway exists, whether a structure can remain, and what a property is ultimately worth.

DiJulio Law Group has represented clients in Glendale, Los Angeles, and throughout Southern California in boundary and easement disputes for more than 35 years. Our approach begins with the facts — the recorded history, the physical survey, and the documented evidence of what was known and disclosed at the time of sale. From there, we build a strategy grounded in current California law and directed at your specific goals, whether that means negotiating a resolution, pursuing litigation, or defending an easement claim against your property.

Cases like Romero v. Shih are a reminder that California real estate law is not static. The rules that governed these disputes last year may not be the same rules that govern them today. Experienced legal counsel matters — not just for the knowledge of existing law, but for the ability to recognize when the law has changed and what that means for your situation.