Benjamin and David Scharps Legal Essay Award

This is a closed-universe essay question, meaning that only the facts as they are written, and the authorities provided, should be considered when you prepare a response to the essay question posed.

The facts presented should be considered as undisputed. In your analysis, you must accept the facts as-is, meaning you must take them exactly as they are written. You are not permitted to make up any facts that are not provided in the record, or make any assumptions based on the facts as they are presented.

While completing this essay task, you should refrain from looking to any other sources for information. Additional outside research may interfere with completing the task as instructed, which is to analyze and evaluate the issues presented and to draw a legal conclusion using only the sources cited in the authority. Additionally, you are not permitted to cite from any authority other than the law and cases provided in the attached. This means you cannot use or rely on newspaper articles, law review articles, or any other sources which you believe are be relevant to the question presented. Additionally, the use of artificial intelligence (A.I.) generators is prohibited. Any essay submissions found to be the product of A.I. will be disqualified. The purpose of prohibiting other sources in your analysis is to see how effectively you are able to craft a legal argument using only the sources of information provided to you.

Additionally, outside sources may lead you believe there is a right or wrong answer. However, for the purposes of this essay, there is no right or wrong conclusion to each of the questions posed, and your essay will not be evaluated based on the conclusion you reach. Instead, your essay will be evaluated based upon your analysis that leads to your conclusion in each of the three issues. Therefore, you should attempt to compare the facts of the cases provided in the authority to the facts of the instant case as a persuasive tool to reason why the court should decide one way or another.

Your essay should be 2,000 words or less.

Your essay will be judged based upon how effectively you’ve articulated the law and court cases, and applied them to the fact pattern provided to reach a conclusion. You will be evaluated based upon how well you articulate the law, and the reasoning you offer to support your conclusions for each issue. Please be sure to include any proper citations when citing a law or a case, as you will be evaluated on your ability to attribute a particular law or reasoning to a source.

2025 Scharp’s Essay Topic

The Dixons own a one-hundred-acre ranch in the rural State of Grainger. The Dixon family has owned the ranch for over fifty years. Sean Dixon is the current owner of the ranch, and he lives there with his two children.  Ten of the acres on the west side of the ranch are developed and contain the Dixon’s three-bedroom home, horse stables, a hay barn, a dairy barn, and a fenced-in area to train horses. The adjacent seventy acres to the east of the Dixon home is comprised of pastures, hay fields, and grazing areas for a herd of fifty cows. Due to some financial difficulties, Dixon sold the remaining eastern-most twenty acres to Dana and Jessie Bratton, who purchased the land in 2004.

On the Bratton’s twenty acres, there is a one-bedroom cabin where the Brattons live. Over the years, the Brattons have built a small farm for themselves. In 2006, they built raised beds for a large vegetable garden, a small horse stable for their horse, Clyde, and a pen to hold four goats. Dana and Jessie loved the companionship of their animals and being able to harvest their own vegetables. They wanted to be able to harvest their own eggs as well and grow their farm so, in 2010 they constructed a pig pen with one pot-belly pig named Pinky, and renovated an old, dilapidated tool shed into a twenty-foot by thirty-foot chicken coop. A fence was installed around the coop to keep predators out.

Once a month, Dixon would take his horse and ride around the perimeter of his eighty acres to inspect the land. He would do this to make sure nothing unexpected happened in the areas of his property that he does not visit every day. For instance, he will occasionally find travelers who pitch tents or hunt on his land who do not realize they are on private property. During one of his monthly inspections, he came to the perimeter of his ranch and the Bratton’s land. He noticed his horse start to get skittish and that Clyde and Pinky were also acting stressed. Dixon then heard a commotion in the chicken coop and realized that the fence around the coop was open. Seeing that the Brattons were not home, Dixon descended from his horse and went to see what all the commotion was about. A fox made it into the chicken coop and began attacking the chickens! Dixon picked up a rake he found nearby, went into the coop, and was able to scare away the fox.

As Dixon closed the fence to ensure the fox could not get back in, he went to put the rake away and realized the old tool shed that had been in that same spot was missing. After closer inspection of the chicken coop, he could see remnants of where the old tool shed was renovated. This upset Dixon, not because he missed the tool shed, but because the tool shed was not included in the twenty acres, he sold to the Brattons. This is the first time that he noticed the tool shed was missing.

Wanting to maintain his relationship with the Brattons, Dixon tried to think of a solution where he could obtain the value for the tool shed and the twenty-foot by thirty-foot piece of land the chicken coop was built on without destroying the chicken coop or just giving up the land. Dixon offered to sell the Brattons the land for a reasonable price, but they refused. The Brattons felt that the tool shed had no value before they renovated it and that the chicken coop does not interfere with Dixon’s use of the land. Dixon felt the survey of the Bratton’s land was very clear before the final sale and has documentation showing the property line ended just before the shed. Dixon now claims that he owns the chicken coop because it is on his property. In response, the Bratton’s filed a claim for adverse possession over the chicken coop, which would give the Brattons ownership over the land and the chicken coop.

You are a law clerk for Judge Kelsey Stannis in the fictional State of Grainger.  You are asked to write an objective memo analyzing whether the Brattons have a successful claim of adverse possession and who owns the chicken coop.  

You may consider the following sources, rules and facts:

A. The State of Grainger has a statute of limitations for adverse possession of ten (10) years.

B. Grainger's Rule (requirements) for Adverse Possession. The adverse possessor obtains legal possession of the property if the possession of the property is:

1. Continuous: Must maintain continuous possession of the property for the time of the statute of limitations.
2. Hostile: Does not mean "hostile" or "angry" - means that the possession infringes on the rights of the true owner and the true owner did not give permission to use the property. If the true owner consents or gives permission for the use of the property, it is not hostile.
3. Open and Notorious: Posession must be obvious through quick observation, putting the owner on notice (making the owner aware) that someone else is in possession.
4. Actual: The adverse possessor is actually in possession of the owner's/someone else's property.
5. Exclusive: The adverse possessor does not share control of the property with anyone else and excludes others from possession of the property, as if they were the owner.

C. Case Law

• Gelles v. Sauvage, NY Slip Op 50120(U) (Sup. Ct. 2023)
• Luminant Mining Co., L.L.C. v. PakeyBey, 14 F.4^th 375 (5^th Cir. 2021)
• North Carolina v. Alcoa Power Generating, Inc., 135 F.Supp.3d 385 (E.D.N.C. 2015)
• Quality Ag Service of Iowa, Inc. v. Burlington Northern and Sante Fe Ry., 809 F.3d 386 (8^th Cir. 2015)
• United States v. 179.9 Acres, More or Less, of Land in Jackson Cnty., Ky., 107 F.Supp. 265 (E.D. Ky. 1952)