WELLFLEET — Chellise Sexton, whose lawyers are preparing their final filings in her case against the town over ownership of 12 units of affordable housing on Fred Bell Way, doesn’t give up easily. She has a long history of protracted legal battles like the one she is now waging in state Land Court.
Final arguments in the dispute over ownership of the property on Fred Bell Way, first reported in the Independent on June 23, are scheduled for delivery in August, following a trial that was held in mid-March, with each side hiring expert title examiners to testify. But even if the town prevails in this next round, there is no guarantee that Chellise Sexton and her son Kevin won’t drag the case out for years in appeals. She has done it before, and more than one local family has a bitter story to tell about the lengths to which they were forced to go in efforts to secure their rights to property that they thought had been long established.
One family, the Paines, eventually won their case Sexton, who tried to wrest ownership of their longtime campground on Old King’s Highway from them. But it took 21 years and more than a million dollars in legal fees.
Another family, the Healeys, lost their land — 1.83 acres in the Cape Cod National Seashore — and the cottage on it, which had been in the family since the 1950s.
The current court case will determine the ownership of 8.6 acres at 324 Old King’s Highway, which the town took for unpaid taxes and where, 18 years ago, Wellfleet built the apartments that are managed as affordable units by the Community Development Partnership. The Sextons have asked the court to order the town off the property and award its title to them.
Chellise Sexton, who is 75, answers the door at her home in Eastham but steadfastly refuses to speak about her current lawsuit or any of the other actions she has brought against local land owners over the years.
120 Sapokonish Way
Joe and Richard Healey and their sister, Dorothy Gotreau, have not forgotten their battle with Sexton that played out 18 years ago over the land at 120 Sapokonish Way in Wellfleet, where the family had spent summers since the 1950s. They were notified by the Land Court in 2004 that Chellise Sexton was claiming she owned the property. After fighting Sexton in court for six years, they lost the property, along with the cabin built there by their father and brother.
“I had to turn in a life insurance policy to help pay the legal expenses to fight Sexton,” said Gotreau by phone from her California home on Sunday. “What we went through was awful. We were really sad.”
Both Sexton and the Healeys had deeds to the property tracing back to Ralph Cook in the 1940s.
Cook granted ownership to William Fleming in 1942 for “less than $100.” The location was not described as Sapokonish Way until later; on the old documents, the land was identified by a narrative that cited landmarks such as “an old wood road leading to Gull Pond in the range of land of the heirs of Joshua Atwood,” and “running easterly to a large pine tree in the range of land owned by Thomas Newcomb,” and so on.
William Fleming, who hadn’t used the property, kept it until 2002 when, at age 92, he was approached by Sexton. He sold the land, now identified as 120 Sapokonish Way, to Sexton for $1,500, according to the deed filed at the Barnstable County Registry.
But Ralph Cook had sold the very same piece of land to Earl Rich in 1945, again for “less than $100.” The description of the property’s location was exactly the same as on the deed granting ownership to William Fleming three years earlier.
In 1952, Rich transferred the land to Alexander Healey, who built a camp there. Several deeds followed as the land’s ownership was transferred to Healey’s descendants. By 2002, those deeds described the property as located at 120 Sapokonish Way.
Sexton filed a petition in Land Court in 2004 to clear the title, according to court documents. The Healey family received summonses to defend their interest in the property. Sexton, whose deed could be traced back to 1942 via Fleming to Ralph Cook, prevailed. The Healeys filed an appeal but ultimately lost in 2010.
“Even though we had been here since ’55, we couldn’t win with adverse possession because we only used it in the summer,” said Joe Healey, who lives in Mashpee, last week.
According to Healey, Ralph Cook had evidently deeded the property to three of his children, with each getting one-third ownership, although that wasn’t made clear on any of the deeds. Sexton, he said, had two deeds to the land to his one. The first had come via Sexton’s mother, Chellise Cook Cardinal. The second was the one she purchased from Fleming in 2002. The third was the deed the Healeys held.
Sexton built a house on the Sapokonish Way property in 2012 that is now valued by the town at $1.36 million. The land Sexton purchased for $1,500 in 2002 is now valued at over $518,000.
The Campground Fight
The most well-known of Sexton’s legal fights involved Paine’s Campground, which Robert and Cynthia Paine ran on about 30 acres off Old King’s Highway every summer beginning in 1958. The property consisted of several lots. Because they didn’t have a clear recorded title to some sections of it, the Paines filed a petition in Land Court in 1999 to assert title to the entire property.
Robert, their son who is known as Buddy, became the owner of the land and the petitioner in the case a few years later.
The Land Court appointed a title examiner, who spent several years researching titles to the campground. In 2008, the court notified a list of parties who could possibly have an interest in the land, based on the examiner’s research.
Among those who voiced interest were the National Park Service, the town, a couple of family trusts, and the Sextons.
The elder Paines had divided the land into two lots prior to filing in court. One was the campground, and the other was a 1.5-acre property at 116 Old King’s Highway, where their daughter had built a family home in 1978 and for which the Paines had a deed.
Sexton claimed ownership of some of the lots in the campground and, in 2010, added a claim to a fractional interest in the property with the Paine family home. Other parties that had initially responded to the court dropped their interests as the case proceeded, ultimately leaving Sexton as the sole litigant.
The judge ruled that Paine could claim ownership of several lots in the campground solely under the rule of adverse possession, which requires proof of continuous, exclusive, and nonpermissive use of the land for at least 20 years. For the remainder of the campground lots, for which Paine had deeds, the judge granted summary judgment, based on a combination of the deeds and adverse possession.
Sexton appealed both rulings, and a judge ultimately upheld the Land Court’s two decisions in the case in September 2015. Sexton filed a further appeal to the state Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.
The Land Court then took up the petition for registration of the 1.5-acres at 116 Old King’s Highway, which was again contested by Sexton. The court found for Paine via summary judgment in March 2017. Sexton appealed again and again lost the case.
Buddy Paine continues to wait for the certificate of registration of title for the 1.5-acre family property from the Land Court, which is delaying a sale that is required under a divorce agreement. In 2018, he decided to allow the state Dept. of Conservation and Recreation to take the campground land via a friendly eminent domain proceeding, for which he received $3.6 million. But, he says, he spent more than $1 million fighting Sexton in court over the 21 years since the case was first filed.
