You know that uneasy feeling when a neighbor starts using “your” edge of the property like it’s a public road? In Lubbock County, Texas, that anxiety turned into a full-blown legal fight after a landowner discovered a 30-foot access strip showing up in the paperwork—added by a correction he says he never signed.
The dispute, laid out in the court’s opinion, ended with the neighbor keeping the right to cross anyway. Not because the court shrugged at the signature issue, but because the history around the property made it hard to pretend the access was ever optional.
The “driveway” wasn’t a driveway — it was a 30-foot strip
John Neudorf owned a little over five acres. Next door sat a 15.99-acre tract that, over time, ended up owned by Jeffrey Coomer. The catch was access: that adjoining tract depended on using the north 30 feet of Neudorf’s land for ingress, egress, and utilities.
That kind of easement can feel like a technicality when everything’s calm. It’s just a wide path on a map, maybe a worn track in grass, maybe a place you don’t build a fence because you “know” it’s supposed to stay open…