Coordinating Title Insurance & Prescriptive Rights – SDGE

The Mount Signal solar project for SDGE involved a complex title issue: prescriptive rights — the legal rights that arise when someone has openly and continuously used another person's land for a period of years, even without formal permission. These rights cloud title and must be resolved before a lender will finance a project.

Prescriptive rights are particularly difficult to resolve because they are based on historical use patterns that may not be documented anywhere. Establishing whether they exist, who holds them, and how to address them requires careful investigation and legal analysis.

TerraPro Solutions worked through the history of land use at the Mount Signal site, identifying where prescriptive rights claims could arise and what evidence existed to support or refute them. We coordinated between the title company, outside legal counsel, and the project team to develop a strategy for resolving the claims and obtaining title insurance coverage.

This required a combination of title curative work, legal analysis, and negotiation with the title insurer around the specific risk — ultimately resulting in a structure that the title company could insure.

Title insurance was issued covering the prescriptive rights issues, and the project financing closed. The coordinated approach between legal, title, and project teams ensured that what could have been a deal-stopping issue was resolved without delaying the closing timeline.