A neighbouring contractor tried to shut down access before closing

The situation

Ten days before closing, Huong's real estate lawyer forwarded her a letter that had arrived at the seller's office. It came from a construction company operating on the adjacent lot, owned by Ratana, and it stated flatly that the rail spur crossing the property Huong was buying was for that company's exclusive use, that any interference with its scheduled deliveries would be treated as a legal matter, and that the incoming buyer should be made fully aware of the situation before closing proceeded. The tone was firm, almost pre-emptive, as though Ratana expected a fight and wanted to establish his position before Huong's side had a chance to look into it.

Huong owned a small chain of walk-in clinics across southwestern Ontario, a business she had built up over a decade and a half from a single location, and had been looking, together with her brother, for a property in Wallaceburg where their father Pensri could live near a modest metal fabrication operation he still ran part time, something to keep him occupied and connected to work he loved without the pace of his earlier decades in the trade. The property they had under agreement, priced in the high 1,000,000s, combined a house with an attached workshop and yard, formerly part of a larger industrial parcel that had been subdivided years earlier when the local industrial base was more active than it is today. Pensri's fabrication work depended on receiving raw steel by rail rather than by truck, given the volumes involved, and the listing had specifically noted an easement allowing rail access across a strip of the property, which was the entire reason the deal made practical sense for what Pensri wanted to keep doing with his remaining working years.

Huong had not expected the spur to be contested at all. The agreement of purchase and sale had been signed on the understanding, shared by her, her brother, and the listing agent, that the easement was a settled feature of the property, documented in the title and undisturbed for years without incident. Ratana's letter suggested otherwise, describing a longstanding informal arrangement in which his company had effectively controlled the timing and use of the spur for years even though it ran across land it did not own and never had.

With closing ten days out and financing already arranged through a private lender familiar with Huong's clinic business, she could not simply walk away without significant cost and the loss of a property that fit their father's needs unusually well. At the same time, she could not proceed comfortably without knowing whether the fabrication operation she and her brother were buying the property to support would actually have usable, reliable access to the rail line once they closed. She called us the same afternoon the letter reached her, well aware the clock on the deal was already running.

What the documents showed

The title search told a more complicated story than either the listing or Ratana's letter suggested on their own. The easement had been registered decades earlier, when the original industrial parcel was subdivided into what eventually became Huong's property and the lot Ratana's company now occupied. The registered easement granted rail access rights over the strip of land in question, but it named the two resulting parcels jointly as beneficiaries, without specifying priority, scheduling, or exclusivity for either side, in the somewhat general drafting style common to easements of that era.

In other words, the document did not support Ratana's claim of exclusive use, but it also did not clearly guarantee Huong's side unrestricted access whenever it wanted it, which meant Huong's initial hope of a straightforward legal victory was not realistic either. It was a shared right, undefined in its day-to-day mechanics, and the two properties had apparently coexisted for years under an informal understanding that predated both current owners and had never been written down anywhere we could find.

We also found, buried in the seller's file of old correspondence provided during due diligence rather than anything volunteered upfront, a set of letters from roughly fifteen years earlier between the seller's predecessor and Ratana's predecessor discussing rail delivery scheduling directly. Nothing in those letters supported an exclusive right for either side; if anything, they documented an ongoing, occasionally testy negotiation between two parties who both clearly understood the spur to be shared property, with disputes over timing arising periodically over the years and generally resolved by informal agreement between the operators rather than any formal legal process or written contract.

This distinction mattered enormously for how we advised Huong going forward. Ratana's letter, read entirely on its own and without the benefit of the title history, sounded like a serious legal threat that might derail the purchase outright or force an expensive fight before closing. Read against the actual registered easement and the historical correspondence we uncovered, it looked much more like an opening position in a scheduling dispute that had simply never been formalized between the two operations, now surfacing because a change in ownership made the old informal understanding feel less secure to the party on the other side of the fence line.

We flagged one further wrinkle for Huong before recommending any next step. The historical letters showed the two operations had occasionally disagreed sharply over timing, once nearly reaching the point of one side threatening to block the spur physically during a dispute over a large delivery. That history suggested Ratana's company genuinely valued its access and might resist any arrangement that felt like a downgrade from what it had grown used to, even if that use had never been legally guaranteed in the first place.

What we did

1. Ordered a full historical title search on both the subject property and the neighbouring lot, rather than accepting either the listing's brief mention of the easement or Ratana's letter as an accurate summary of what it actually granted. Understanding exactly how and when the easement was created, and precisely which parcels it named as beneficiaries, was the only way to test Ratana's claim of exclusivity against the real registered document, and it gave us a factual foundation neither side could later dispute.
2. Reviewed the seller's retained correspondence for any prior dealings involving the spur, rather than treating the registered easement as the whole story. The fifteen-year-old letters we found were not part of the standard closing documents provided as a matter of course; we specifically asked the seller's lawyer for anything historical relating to the easement, and that targeted request turned out to produce the most useful evidence in the entire file, evidence that would never have surfaced from the standard document package alone.
3. Advised Huong on the realistic legal position before recommending any negotiation strategy. We were clear and direct that the document supported a shared right, not an exclusive one on either side, so she understood her actual leverage and its limits before any conversation with Ratana's company began in earnest, rather than walking in expecting a straightforward legal win the paperwork simply did not support.
4. Recommended a practical scheduling conversation rather than an immediate legal response. Because the underlying issue was fundamentally operational rather than a genuine dispute over legal entitlement, we suggested Huong's brother and Ratana's company work out a delivery schedule directly between the people who actually ran the deliveries, since a workable day-to-day arrangement would serve both operations far better than a position staked out in dueling letters.
5. Facilitated an introductory call between the two sides once a practical framework was informally agreed. We attended the call to make sure nothing discussed would later be read as conceding more than intended on either side, while otherwise letting the operational people work out the actual mechanics of shared use between themselves, since the people scheduling the trucks understood the real logistics far better than either lawyer did.
6. Drafted a formal shared-use agreement reflecting the schedule the two operations had agreed to, rather than leaving the arrangement as a verbal understanding between two operations managers. Converting it into a written, registrable document meant the arrangement would survive a future change in ownership on either side, something the old informal system, built on personal relationships between long-departed predecessors, had never managed to do even once in decades.
7. Negotiated the specific terms of the agreement to protect Pensri's operational needs, not just Huong's legal position. We pushed for language guaranteeing a minimum number of weekly delivery windows for the fabrication business, rather than leaving the schedule entirely subject to future renegotiation, so Pensri would have real certainty even if the relationship between the two operations soured or the people running them changed years down the road.
8. Registered the agreement against title for both properties, rather than leaving it as a signed contract sitting in a file drawer. This protected Pensri's fabrication operation going forward, since the next owner of either lot, whoever that eventually turned out to be, would be bound by clear written terms on the public record rather than inheriting the same ambiguity Huong had just spent ten stressful days navigating before closing.

The outcome

Closing proceeded on schedule, roughly on the original date, once the shared-use agreement was signed and ready to register. The practical fix was not really a legal one at all: Huong's brother and Ratana's operations manager worked out a weekly delivery schedule between themselves in about two conversations, splitting the spur's usable windows in a way that reflected each business's actual freight volume rather than either side's opening demand or the tone of the initial letter. Ratana's company received the earlier weekday slots it said it needed for its regular suppliers, who apparently preferred morning deliveries, and Pensri's fabrication deliveries were scheduled around them, mostly in the afternoons and on a rotating basis for larger loads.

The legal work was protecting that practical arrangement rather than creating it in the first place. Registering the schedule as a formal, written agreement meant Pensri's access was no longer dependent on Ratana's goodwill, on the informal understanding two long-departed predecessors had once maintained, or on an arrangement that could shift unpredictably with new management on either side of the line in future years. This counted as a partial outcome rather than a clean win, and we described it that way to Huong from the outset rather than overstating what had been achieved: Pensri's operation did not get unrestricted access to the spur whenever it wanted, and it gave up the earlier weekday windows Ratana's larger operation had claimed by longstanding practice, even though nothing in the original registered document actually guaranteed Ratana those specific hours.

Huong told us afterward that the ten days before closing had been the most stressful part of the entire purchase, more than the financing or the building inspection, because the letter had made the whole plan for her father feel suddenly uncertain right when it seemed settled. Pensri moved in about six weeks after closing and has been running fabrication deliveries under the new schedule since, with the business side of the property operating comfortably within the windows the registered agreement sets out, and no further disputes with the neighbouring operation reported since the arrangement took effect.

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