Ownership and the rights pertaining to them also have liabilities levied by local, state, and federal laws and regulations. If the neighbors claim adverse possession, they also had a responsibility to abide by those same laws and regulations regarding the land they possessed.
The laws of adverse possession are not laws intended to give criminals an opportunity to steal property from their neighbors when the property rights were not being enforced. They are intended to address real situation where two parties and real property is involved, where the proper owner of the property fails to make any use of that property and another is able to make use of the property but not yet formally recognized as the owner.
An honest and honorable man seeking ownership by adverse possession would also have made numerous attempts to treat the property as his own and lived up to those civic responsibilities. He also would have attempted to purchase the land fairly from the proper owners.
I suspect the judge and lawyer couple are guilty of fraud, but not enough information is provided in the article.
If the owner’s historical payment of taxes doesn’t reflect their responsible ownership, then the pathway adjacent the owner’s house has even less value to a righteous judge.