The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is suing an exclusive south shore beach association, accusing it of trespass and intimidation.

The action flows from a protracted dispute between the conservation agency and Quansoo Beach Association (QBA), over access to a 145-acre property Sheriff’s Meadow wants to open to the public. But the QBA is resolute in its wish to maintain a locked gate — sometimes with a guard — on the access road to the property, even though the gate now sits on land owned by Sheriff’s Meadow, as a result of a generous bequest from the late Florence (Flipper) Harris five years ago.

On June 4 Sheriff’s Meadow filed a complaint in Dukes County Superior Court against the Quansoo Beach Association to assert its rights in the matter. Written by Edgartown attorney Ronald H. Rappaport, the strongly-worded complaint seeks money damages for trespass and a trial by jury.

The foundation already has gone to considerable lengths to placate the beach association. Earlier this year, in response to the QBA’s previous attempt to deny public access to the property, Sheriff’s Meadow was forced to construct a new 850-foot-long section of road, at the cost of some damage to native vegetation. There was no alternative, however. The existing road passed across land owned by three members of the QBA, Richard Child, John Ford and James White, president of the association and reportedly the major driver of the opposition to greater public access onto Sheriff’s Meadow property.

Now, the entire length of the road, which QBA members use to reach their properties, runs on Sheriff’s Meadow land.

The new road was finished in February. Back then, Sheriff’s Meadow executive director Adam Moore said minor issues remained unresolved, such as responsibility for maintenance of the road — which is mostly used by QBA members — and the location of a new gate. Still, he hoped to have a trail around the land opened by early May. Then negotiations hit a roadblock, as it were, forcing recourse to the lawyers.

“Quansoo Beach Association, Inc. (QBA), an association of private beach rights owners, has no legal right to maintain a locked gate, which blocks a single lane road and impedes access to a newly opened, 145-acre Sheriff’s Meadow preserve situated on the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard,” the complaint says.

It also recounts the history of the gate, and how Sheriff’s Meadow came to own the land on which it is constructed. The land previously belonged to a beach association member, the late Mrs. Harris. She and her husband also owned several Quansoo beach lots. The gate was set up with her permission, about a mile back up Quansoo Road from the beach, and was traditionally locked from June 15 to Sept. 15 each year, so only landowners and their guests could gain entry to the beach. Sheriff’s Meadow gradually acquired land inside the gate, including several of the beach lots, in a series of deeds, between 1981 and 2004 from Mrs. Harris, and was willed more following her death in June 2005. And Sheriff’s Meadow was not the only beneficiary of her generosity. She also conveyed 6.8 acres to the QBA, which now is used as its parking lot at the beach. Both Mrs. Harris and Sheriff’s Meadow had keys to the gate.

Beach keys are a valuable commodity and have traded for more than $300,000 in recent years. The beach association currently has about 145 members, who collectively own about one mile of beach that runs between the Atlantic Ocean and the Tisbury Great Pond. Sheriff’s Meadow has no plan to dispense with the gate, only to move it about three-quarters of a mile further down Quansoo Road, past the driveways accessing the various beach houses and its Quansoo farm property. The new gate would still prevent access to the beach. The current gate, the court complaint says, has in recent years been expanded by the addition of metal posts sunk into the ground to block walkers from getting around it.

“The QBA also posts a guard at various times, at the gate, who stops all vehicles and inquires whether the occupants are QBA members. These measures further impede or intimidate access to the Sheriff’s Meadow property. Sheriff’s Meadow has withdrawn permission for QBA to maintain the gate in its present location, but QBA has refused to remove the gate, claiming prescriptive rights,” the complaint says.

Prescriptive rights are access rights gained through regular use over a long time. Sheriff’s Meadow denies such rights exist, and absent a settlement, it will now be up to the superior court to decide.

The court dispute casts a pall over what was seen as a signal of success for the Island conservation movement, thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Harris. When she died, she not only gave Sheriff’s Meadow the 145-acre Quansoo Farm, but also a separate 5.8-acre lot which it could sell to provide an endowment for the upkeep of the farm. But rather than sell it to a private owner, Sheriff’s Meadow sold the lot to another conservation organization, the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, for $3 million. At the time of the sale, in April 2008, this was hailed as an unprecedented act of cooperation. At the time Sheriff’s Meadow’s president, the late Steve Crampton, called it “a blueprint for the future” of such cooperative endeavors. It meant visitors could not only walk a trail around Quansoo Farm — the land bank was granted a trail easement as part of the deal — but also gain access for shellfishing and other activities on the Tisbury Great Pond, via a trail on land bank property. Out of consideration for the beach association members, it was agreed parking would be allowed on the land bank property only during the off-season. During the summer season, the only parking for those who wish to walk the trails is located on Sheriff’s Meadow land in a small area a mile from the beach. Anyone parking anywhere else, the conservation agencies offered, would be towed.

But still the beach association was not happy, concerned that walkers or cyclists on Sheriff’s Meadow property would impede resident traffic, and that a locked gate a quarter-mile from the private beach would be less of a deterrent to would-be trespassers than a locked gate a mile from the beach. As the QBA put it in one piece of correspondence preceding the legal action, their beach would be “tantalizingly close.”

The dispute is unfortunate for Sheriff’s Meadow as well, because the beach association and the conservation organization have overlapping memberships.

This week, the executive director of Sheriff’s Meadow, Adam Moore, continued to hold hope that the dispute could be resolved out of court. “Yes, we have filed suit, but we are still negotiating with the Quansoo Beach Association,” he said. “Those negotiations are encouraging, but given that they are still continuing, I don’t want to make any further comment, yet.”