Brian Carter settled a case in which the firm’s clients sought to quiet title to a prescriptive access easement along a road that provides access to the East Fork of the Russian River, a valuable commodity in the dog days of summer in Ukiah. The settlement provides for a stipulated judgment enshrining the easement on the record. The defendant, who had unilaterally erected a locked gate across the road, failed to appreciate long standing California law that requires a purchaser of real property to take notice of conditions on the property being purchased, and to take title subject to the rights of third parties that would be obvious or could reasonably be discovered by the purchaser based on conditions on the ground. See, e.g., See, e.g., Follette v. Pacific Light & Power Corp. (1922) 189 Cal. 193, 213 (purchaser of property may not “willfully close[] his eyes to visible pertinent facts, indicating adverse interest in or encumbrances upon the estate he seeks to acquire”); Scott v. Henry (1925) 196 Cal. 666, 670 (at time of purchase, irrigation “ditch was plainly visible and in use by the plaintiffs upon and across said land. This fact would suffice to put the purchaser of the lands in question upon such an inquiry as to a possible adverse user as would lead him to an actual knowledge of the rights of those apparently exercising an easement over his land.”); Ocean Shore Railroad Co. v. Spring Valley Water Co. (1933) 218 Cal. 86, 88 (“defendant golf club, while lacking actual knowledge of plaintiff’s easement when negotiating for the purchase of the property, had actual notice of circumstances sufficient to put it upon inquiry which, if prosecuted, would have disclosed plaintiff’s interest and right in the property. This being so, the defendant golf club is chargeable with constructive knowledge of the existence of plaintiff’s right-of-way. Its title to the property is, therefore, subject to plaintiff’s easement.”); Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. Minnette (1953), 115 Cal.App.2d 698, 706 (“[T]he knowledge with which [purchasers] are charged is the knowledge they would have gained had they pursued the inquiry required of them.”).