Prescriptive easement of support may arise from long user of a wall, but adverse possession needs hostile possession.

Material facts pleaded in a written statement can be examined for their legal effect even without an express label of adverse possession or easement, so long as the opposite party had notice of the case to be met. On the facts, long and open user of a wall for inserting rafters and taking structural support did not amount to hostile possession sufficient to extinguish title by adverse possession. That conduct was consistent with a prescriptive easement of support under the Easements Act. The plaintiff's title to the wall was therefore affirmed, while the defendants' easementary and prescriptive rights were preserved.

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Issues: (i) Whether the absence of an express plea of adverse possession or easement in the written statement barred the defendants from relying on those rights. (ii) Whether the defendants had acquired title to the disputed portion of the wall by adverse possession or only an easementary right of support by prescription.

Issue (i): Whether the absence of an express plea of adverse possession or easement in the written statement barred the defendants from relying on those rights.

Analysis: Pleadings must contain material facts, but they are not to be read with undue technicality. Where the written statement set out the factual basis of the defendants' user of the wall, the court could examine the legal consequence of those facts. A specific technical label such as adverse possession or easement was not indispensable if the underlying facts were pleaded and proved and the opposite party had notice of the case to be met.

Conclusion: The absence of an express technical plea did not, by itself, preclude consideration of the defendants' claim based on the pleaded facts.

Issue (ii): Whether the defendants had acquired title to the disputed portion of the wall by adverse possession or only an easementary right of support by prescription.

Analysis: Adverse possession requires open, continuous and hostile possession adverse to the true owner, with the necessary assertion of hostile title. On the facts found, the defendants' user consisted of inserting rafters into the wall and taking structural support from it for a long period. That user was consistent with an easement of support and prescription under the Easements Act, not with hostile possession of the servient owner's wall. The statutory scheme of easements and the evidence did not establish the ingredients needed to extinguish the plaintiff's title by adverse possession. The proper legal character of the defendants' long user was an easementary right of support by prescription.

Conclusion: The finding of title by adverse possession was unsustainable, but the defendants were entitled to a prescriptive easement of support over the wall.

Final Conclusion: The plaintiff's title to the wall was affirmed and the decree was modified accordingly, while preserving the defendants' easementary and prescriptive rights in the wall.

Ratio Decidendi: A long and open user of another's wall for support, proved from pleaded facts, may establish a prescriptive easement of support, but it does not amount to adverse possession unless hostile possession of the servient property is specifically proved.

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