In 2025, an Indiana appeals court let five gravel speed bumps remain on a road to a landlocked hunting property; the neighbour had installed them after raising concerns about contractors speeding near his children and dogs

Access easements can allow a landlocked parcel to reach a public road and are often created in deeds or other recorded instruments. The children and working dogs may use the area around the road, while those having the right to drive there could be hunters, contractors or occasional visitors. The dispute reached the Indiana Court of Appeals, which considered how far a landowner may go to slow traffic on a road subject to a neighbor’s easement.A twenty-foot easement between the Gigers and Joshua Hogue The background and legal findings come from the Indiana Court of Appeals opinion in Anthony J. Giger v. Joshua L. Hogue, issued on October 24, 2025, which affirmed the denial of an injunction to remove five gravel speed bumps from an access easement. In its opinion in Giger v. Hogue, the Indiana Court of Appeals held that speed bumps are not automatically unlawful and that their effect on an easement holder’s rights depends on whether they materially impair or unreasonably interfere with reasonable passage. Since 2006, Anthony Giger and his wife have owned an adjacent property in Nineveh, Indiana, which they use for hunting and recreational purposes. This land is officially considered to be landlocked; an easement of twenty feet in width for access through roadways and utilities has been established and it runs through some of the land acquired by Joshua Hogue in 2020. Hogue lived on the land with his wife, children and working dogs. The trial court opinion also noted intense animosity between the families and found that Hogue had obstructed the easement in different ways until 2022.Five gravel speed bumps built in 2024 It all started for Hogue in early 2024 when he observed the contractors on the neighboring property speeding down the road. According to the opinion, Hogue requested that they slow down and even put up a sign stating “slow down, children and dogs present.” With vehicles still moving at a rate which he considered too dangerous, he put up five speed bumps out of gravel. He presented two photographs as evidence. The first one showed the speed bumps to be about four inches high, while the other picture was taken after five months of putting up the speed bumps and indicated that they had worn down.Following the completion of the work by the contractors, Giger requested that the speed bumps be removed, but Hogue rejected that proposal. The Gigers filed a suit in Brown Circuit Court requesting a permanent injunction. At trial, Giger argued that the speed bumps made him speed up and slow down and created a rough ride, although he admitted that the speed bumps were not hindering him from traveling through the easement. Judge Mary Wertz rejected the request.Why Judge DeBoer treated speed bumps as a question of factThe Gigers argued that Indiana law bars interference with easements and that speed bumps are unreasonable per se. Judge DeBoer, along with Chief Judge Altice and Judge Pyle, disagreed with both claims. The panel cited Drees Co. v. Thompson from 2007, which states that a landowner may not materially impair or unreasonably interfere with an easement, distinguishing Rennaker v. Gleason from 2009, in which the removed obstacles included telephone poles, boulders, fence posts and movable piers.The ruling emphasizes that there are no cases in Indiana law that consider speed bumps unreasonable, while courts in Florida, Missouri, New York and Oregon have refused to do so. One case in particular from Oregon dating back to 1981 has been identified wherein a bump of no more than seven inches was determined not to be unreasonable interference. The panel found that whether speed bumps unreasonably impair the easement is a question of fact and affirmed the ruling.Pedestrian injury risk and speed hump evidence The court considered Hogue’s stated reason irrelevant to its decision, although research supports the general safety concerns underlying his actions. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety published Impact Speed and a Pedestrian’s Risk of Severe Injury or Death in 2011, drawing on federal crash data from 1994 to 1998. The research showed that the average risk of sustaining severe injuries when hit by a vehicle is 10% at 16 mph, 25% at 23 mph and 50% at 31 mph. The paper adds that the risk curves were standardized to a U.S. pedestrian struck by a car or light truck in 2007-2009, after weighting the 1994-1998 federal crash data to correct for oversampling of the most severely injured pedestrians. It also found that age mattered: a 70-year-old hit at 25 mph faced about the same risk of severe injury or death as a 30-year-old struck at 35 mph.Whether bumps lower collision rates has been tested separately. The study Installation of speed humps and pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions in Toronto, Canada: a quasi-experimental study, published in BMC Public Health, analyzed 27,827 pedestrian collisions recorded between 2000 and 2011. The collision rates per meter of road per month decreased after installation. They recommended conducting an area-wide study to ensure that the collisions have just been relocated to other streets instead of being reduced. The study covered municipal speed humps on public streets, not private gravel bumps like those in Indiana. The authors mapped the collisions across 404 classified roadways and found 1,344 crashes on 176 kilometers of roads with speed humps, with 296 fewer collisions overall after installation.What the ruling means for easement disputes The decision turns upon the findings of fact presented in court and, most notably, the testimony that the bumps did not stop Mr. Giger from entering his land. A higher or more rigid obstacle that effectively hindered any reasonable access to the plaintiff's land could also have been ordered to be cleared away. The above-mentioned study found that collision rates declined more among children than adults, with estimated reductions of 43% for children and 20% for adults. However, the research examined public roadways in Toronto, not the private gravel access road involved in the Indiana case.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.