Are easements retroactive?

Board members signed an easement for utility boxes that were installed well before any easement was in place. I think the utility company discovered their error and then asked for the easement. The utility company has now placed 6 utility boxes within this easement area and only 2 were placed after the signed easement. Are easements generally retroactive? (attached a picture so you can see why this is an issue for us.)

Nancy,

I am not an attorney and I do not work within the legal profession. The question you ask is one of a legal nature.

If the boxes are within the easement, I don't see what you are hoping to accomplish.

If the boxes are outside of the easement, then it may be possible to force the utility company to move them (unless the company had permission from the owner at the time to place them there).

In answer to your first question, the condo board could have demanded that the utility boxes be removed once they learned about the lack of an easement. But what would that have done other than shut off the power and I doubt anyone wanted that to happen. Granting the easement after-the-fact was the only practical action to take, although it sounds like the board should have been demanded that the lines be relocated to the rear of your property. By granting the easement the board lost all power to bargain about relocation.

I know of nothing that prevents a property owner from granting an easement after someone else has begun using the easement.

How large are the boxes in your front yard? I have seen utility boxes the size of a loaf of bread and others the size of a walk-in closet.

Not sure about a "retroactive" easement. It may not have been an error. Perhaps an original easement was granted by the developer when the condos were originally built. Maybe for some reason the easement didn't transfer when the development was turned over to the homeowners or maybe it needed to be reaffirmed when the development was turned over and that wasn't done. I was on our board during transition of our community and I recall something about us having to grant easements to certain utilities. I think you need to do a little more homework to determine what the situation actually is.

As for the boxes, without pictures it's hard to tell what they really are, but I'll take a guess.

In most developments today utility wires are buried in the street and the street runs by, you guessed it, the front of most units. The utility boxes could range from simple distribution points to electrical transformers, voltage regulators, and the like. It is simply not practical, nor economical, to locate these units in the back yards. They need to be closer to the street or to the point where they can serve the most units. Not only that, but to place the boxes in the back would mean requiring easements to run the utility wires underground from the front to the back.

Our utility boxes are all in front, but most of them are hidden by surrounding them with attractive bushes that grow 4 to 6 feet tall.

They may be unsightly, but they are a necessary evil if we wish to have all those modern goodies we been accustomed to.

If possible, I would suggest that if the boxes are on common property, the association conceal them with appropriate plantings.