Twenty Mile House Shared Lane Easement

The shared-driveway easement was the legal arrangement governing access between the White Castle and the Twenty Mile House. Its terms granted Nigel Mills-Murray ingress and egress across property belonging to the Twenty Mile House, along with authority over landscaping decisions and maintenance. During the feud between Mills-Murray and Bernadette Fox, that distinction turned the driveway into a contested boundary: the easement supported his control of its appearance, but it did not authorize guests to park there.

The Easement and Its Terms

The two properties shared a driveway that was technically an easement deeded to the White Castle over the Twenty Mile House’s property. After Mills-Murray completed his house, he sent Fox the title report, which specified his rights of “ingress and egress” and “landscaping decisions and maintenance.” The document established a practical asymmetry: although the driveway crossed Fox’s property, Mills-Murray’s easement gave him a stated role in its upkeep and appearance.

That authority became especially galling to Fox when Mills-Murray planted California fan palms along the shared driveway, each tree lowered into place by helicopter. She thought the landscaping made her entry look like a Ritz-Carlton and complained, but the title report gave Mills-Murray a documented basis for his landscaping decisions. For David Walker, the recurring legal language became inseparable from the dispute; years later, he recalled that hearing “easement,” “ingress,” or “egress” still made him feel sick.

The Oscar-Party Dispute

The easement’s limits became decisive when Mills-Murray hosted a lavish Oscar after-party at the White Castle, with Prince performing in the backyard. Because parking was scarce along Mulholland Drive, Mills-Murray hired a valet service. The day before the event, Fox overheard his assistant and the head valet work out where to put a hundred cars, then notified a dozen towing companies that cars would be parked illegally on her driveway.

During the party, while the valets slipped into the backyard to watch Prince perform “Let’s Go Crazy,” Fox waved in the waiting tow trucks. Twenty cars were removed. When Mills-Murray confronted her in anger, she calmly produced the property title: the driveway easement permitted “ingress and egress,” not parking cars. The title report that had earlier frustrated her over the palms now supplied the precise distinction on which her retaliation depended.

Function in the Neighbor Feud

The easement did not settle the conflict so much as give its participants a shared vocabulary for escalating it. Mills-Murray relied on the document to defend his landscaping authority; Fox invoked its narrower access language to challenge his party’s use of the driveway. In both cases, a technical property instrument turned ordinary choices—where to plant trees, where to leave cars—into questions of who could control the shared space.

The episode also makes the dispute’s formal irony concrete. Fox had resented a title report that made her feel displaced at her own entrance, yet at the party she wielded that same report with precision. The easement’s distinction between passage and parking allowed her to turn a legal boundary into an operational trap: the driveway remained available for access, while the cars occupying it became vulnerable to towing.