The Superior Court of Fulton County granted the motion for summary judgment filed by BP Products North America, Inc. in the action to enforce an easement filed by Decker Car Wash, Inc. The trial court denied Decker’s cross-motion for summary judgment. Decker appeals, contending that, pursuant to OCGA § 44-9-4, a parol license to use BP’s property had ripened into an easement running with the land in favor of Decker’s property. For the reasons that follow, we affirm. Viewed in the light most favorable to Decker,1 the undisputed evidence showed that Miles F. Daly, Sr. bought 2980 Piedmont Road, Atlanta, in 1964 and operated a car dealership there for the next 30 years. When Daly bought the property, Gulf Oil owned and operated a gas station on the adjacent property, which was at the corner of Piedmont Road and Pharr Road. Daly deposed, without contradiction, that starting in approximately 1965, and continuing to 1995, he had several verbal conversations with the owners and operators of the Gulf Station property. . . . In the course of these conversations, Daly and the owners and operators of the Gulf Station agreed to maintain a mutually beneficial black topped driveway on an area of Daly’s property, whereby parties leaving Daly’s property could use this area for egress to the Gulf Station property for vehicular and pedestrian traffic, to allow his customers to go and purchase gas at the station, and exit through the Gulf Property to the curb cuts on Pharr Road and to enable such customers to turn left onto Pharr Road or to turn right onto Pharr Road to use the traffic signal at that corner. Daly and Gulf Oil constructed a driveway connecting the properties. BP became the owner of the gas station in 1985, through a corporate merger, and Daly’s customers continued using the driveway.
Daly closed the car dealership in 1995. After dividing 2980 Piedmont Road into two subparcels, Daly leased the subparcel adjacent to the gas station to Decker in 2001. Decker built a large car wash on the property, at great expense, which opened in 2003. In 2004, Decker’s owner, Francis Lynch, learned that BP had decided to replace the store on its property and to reconfigure the parking lot. BP erected a chain barricade across the driveway that connected the BP station and Decker’s car wash and later built a solid wall there.
