Navigating competing rights on NH’s lakefronts

Lakefront property owners should understand their rights to the water

Picture a lakefront homeowner who wakes one August morning to find a mooring ball and jet ski a few feet off her beach, placed by a neighbor with no waterfront of his own. Or imagine a shorefront owner whose grandchildren swim all summer in front of their home, and their neighbor begins driving directly through the swim area with their new powerboat. Variations on both scenarios have already been litigated in New Hampshire courts, and both are becoming more common as waterfront values climb and lake traffic grows. How courts have addressed these “littoral rights” disputes is worth knowing whether you own shorefront property, plan to buy it or hold deeded rights to a community beach.

What are littoral rights?

New Hampshire’s lakes and ponds are mostly public. Under RSA 271:20, any natural body of fresh water of 10 acres or more is held in trust by the state, and the public has a common-law right to boat, swim, fish and recreate on it. That public right, which has been recognized by courts since at least the 1800s, does not, however, grant the same rights as those enjoyed by lakefront owners.

Owning lakefront property comes with “littoral rights” — a bundle of property interests, separate from and more extensive than the public’s, that attaches automatically to shorefront ownership. Littoral rights include building docks and wharves, and reasonably using the water directly in front of the property for swimming, boating and other recreation.

Whether the conflict is between the public and a lakefront owner, or between neighboring owners, the question is not whether littoral rights exist, but how far they extend and what an owner can do when someone interferes with them.

Nuisance: The well-established path

New Hampshire’s foundational case on interference with littoral rights, Heston v. Ousler, 119 N.H. 58 (1979), still frames these disputes today. In Heston, the trial court found that a dock, enlarged and moved to the property’s edge, was a nuisance. The Supreme Court agreed, describing it as the “proverbial pig in the parlor,” the right structure in the wrong place. That decision established two enduring rules: a littoral owner’s rights turn on reasonable use, and equitable relief can go beyond an all-or-nothing outcome.

These rules were applied in Hawkins v. Yannetty, No. 218-2021-CV-00796 (Rockingham Super. Ct. Feb. 1, 2023), where a couple with only deeded beach rights and no waterfront of their own, placed two moorings 100 to 125 feet off a neighbor’s shorefront on Big Island Pond. The court found that permanent, exclusive occupation of that space was a private nuisance. In a more recent case, the Merrimack Superior Court found that repeated docking maneuvers through a neighbor’s primary swim area were just as unreasonable as the fixed structures in Heston and Hawkins.

Establishing a nuisance is only half the fight. Defendants often have invoked decades of tolerated use as a shield. The Supreme Court rejected such a defense in Sklader v. Callahan, No. 2024-0031, 2025 WL 1671772 (N.H. June 13, 2025), holding that a shorefront owner who had docked over his property line for 46 years did not have a continuing right to violate his neighbor’s correlative littoral rights. A longstanding practice creates at most an expectation, not an entitlement, that can defeat a live nuisance claim.

Together, these decisions share a through-line: New Hampshire courts treat unreasonable interference with littoral rights as an abatable nuisance, regardless of its form, the defendant’s identity or how long it went unchallenged.

Trespass: available, but less traveled

Trespass requires an intentional invasion of another’s property. Because the lakebed is public, trespass claims here concern invasion of the littoral right, not ownership of the water or soil beneath it. In Hawkins, the court held that an unauthorized mooring in a shorefront owner’s littoral area can itself amount to trespass, particularly when left in place through the winter, excluding both owner and public.

Whether Hawkins’ trespass analysis will extend to other kinds of encroachments remains an open question. New Hampshire courts have tended to grant relief under the better-established nuisance doctrine rather than expand trespass law.

A statutory alternative route

Nuisance and trespass are common-law doctrines, but littoral rights disputes often intersect with statutory schemes as well, chiefly the wetlands statute (RSA 482-A), the mooring statute (RSA 270) and related regulations. These are sometimes invoked as though they limit or preempt common-law claims; that reading usually is mistaken. They may supply additional causes of action, but they do not supplant nuisance and trespass, which typically provide more complete relief.

Protecting littoral rights

Littoral rights are a recognized, court-enforced property interest, and their value is baked into the amount shorefront owners pay for waterfront. Whether it is the mooring ball off the beach or the powerboat cutting through the swim area, these are not the price of living on the water; they are violations of littoral rights. When those interests are unreasonably infringed, owners have recourse.

Sometimes a cease-and-desist letter is enough. If not, owners can enforce their rights through the courts, and recent decisions have shown that New Hampshire courts will enjoin such conduct and protect littoral rights.

Rebecca Walkley is an attorney in McLane Middleton’s Administrative Law Department. She can be reached at rebecca.walkley@mclane.com.

Owning lakefront property comes with ‘littoral rights’ that cover docks and wharves and the area in front of the property for recreation.