Before 2011, one person owned both of two adjoining lots. Tenants on one of the lots used portions of the adjoining lot for access, parking, and garbage removal, and as a garden. After 2011, different lenders foreclosed on the two lots, separating their ownership. Plaintiff bought one of the lots and sued to keep the tenants of the other lot from using it. Held, since the trial judge had exercised her equitable powers in deciding the tenants’ claim to a prescriptive easement, her decision is reviewed for an abuse of discretion. There was no abuse of discretion in holding that the tenants’ use of the adjoining lot was adverse and not pursuant to permission. The person who had last owned both lots may have known about and allowed the use, but her permission didn’t make the tenants’ use non-adverse. While the lots were in common ownership there could be no adverse use, and the common owner could not sue herself or her tenants for trespassing on her own property. Only when ownership of the lots was split could the prescriptive period begin, and there was no evidence that from that point forward anyone had given the tenants permission to use the adjoining lot. Also, the equities did not favor plaintiff who bought with notice of the tenants’ long use of the property he acquired.