Opinion ID: 885241
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Heading: Montana's Open Range Doctrine

Text: ถ 34 In contrast to the open range doctrine in the American west, the English common law held the owner of livestock strictly liable for damages caused to another landowner's property as a result of a trespass. See Monroe v. Cannon (1900), 24 Mont. 316, 61 P. 863 (stating common law rule that an owner of cattle must answer in damages if they stray upon the land of another and tread down his neighbor's herbage, and spoil his corn or his trees); Prosser & Keeton, ง 76 (stating that [t]hose who keep such animals for their own purposes are required to protect the community, at their peril, against the risk involved); Roy H. Andes, A Triumph of Myth Over Principle: The Saga of the Montana Open Range, 56 Mont.L.Rev. 485, 486 (1995) (explaining that the common law rule applies in most American jurisdictions, particularly in the eastern United States) (hereinafter Andes ). ถ 35 Pursuant to this strict liability theory, proving any degree of fault was unnecessary. Thus, the owner was liable regardless of whether the trespass resulted from pure accident or an intentional act. The principle that a livestock owner must fence-in or in some manner restrain his livestock to prevent such a trespass developed from this general common law rule. See generally Thompson v. Mattuschek (1959), 134 Mont. 500, 506, 333 P.2d 1022, 1025; Andes, 56 Mont.L.Rev. at 486.
ถ 36 As a modification of the foregoing common law rule, Montana's open range doctrine that took hold during this state's early territorial days in the 1800s exclusively applied to the legal relationship between landowners by redefining an aggrieved party's remedy for trespass. ถ 37 Under this doctrine, in order to hold a livestock owner strictly liable for trespass damages, a landowner carried the burden of establishing, as a condition precedent, that he had constructed a lawful fence surrounding his entire property. See Schreiner v. Deep Creek Stock Ass'n (1923), 68 Mont. 104, 110, 217 P. 663, 665. Otherwise, livestock could roam onto private property and graze and water at will, and the aggrieved landowner could not recover damages for such a trespass. See Smith v. Williams (1874), 2 Mont. 195, 197, 202. From a pragmatic standpoint, the open range doctrine did nothing more than allocate the cost of constructing and maintaining a fence to landowners who wished to exclude livestock from their property. ถ 38 As explained by scholars and various courts over the years, the underlying reason for modifying the common law remedy as well as reassigning the cost burden โ and providing livestock owners with what amounted to a trespass liability shield โ was that the range cattle industry of the 19th century was based on the availability of unoccupied public domain, which as a matter of state and federal policy remained open for grazing purposes. See Valerie Weeks Scott, The Range Cattle Industry: Its Effect on Western Land Law, 28 Mont.L.Rev. 155, 156, 178-81 (1967) (stating that a typical rancher in the late 1800s required between 2,000 and 50,000 acres of land upon which to graze his cattle) (hereinafter Scott ). Scott's article quotes an early Colorado decision indicating the underlying policy of shifting the cost of fencing to landowners โ namely farmers โ who wished to exclude another person's livestock from their property: The commons are now owned principally by the State and by the general government, and if the grasses which grow thereon are not depastured, they will waste and decay. And while it is impracticable to purchase and fence sufficiently pasture lands for the stock, the tillage and meadow lands can be fenced, and, in point of fact, are now inclosed in nearly all parts of the state. Scott, 28 Mont.L.Rev. at 179 (quoting Morris v. Fraker, 5 Colo. 425, 428-29 (1880)). See also Lazarus v. Phelps (1894), 152 U.S. 81, 85, 14 S.Ct. 477, 478, 38 L.Ed. 363 (stating that it was not thought proper, as the land was gradually taken up by individual proprietors, to change the custom of the country in that particular, and oblige cattle owners to incur the heavy expense of fencing their land, or be held as trespassers by reason of their cattle accidentally straying upon the land of others). ถ 39 Thus, in the days of this Court's 1874 Smith decision, an owner's cattle were free to roam the open range immune from liability in the event livestock wandered onto a neighbor's unfenced property and caused damages. See Schreiner, 68 Mont. at 109, 217 P. at 665 (stating that [t]his state has long been a public range state wherein livestock of private ownership have been and now are permitted by license of the government to graze without hindrance or restriction on the open, unoccupied, public domain). It was from this particular relationship between landowners that the open range no-duty rule arose. See, e.g., Beinhorn v. Griswold (1902), 27 Mont. 79, 90, 69 P. 557, 558 (explaining that the cattle-owning plaintiff did not owe to the land-owning defendant the duty to fence his cattle in and likewise the latter did not owe to the former the duty to fence them out .... neither of them was under obligation to the other in that regard). ถ 40 While born from custom, these trespass rules were legislated into law early on and remain codified to this day in Montana. As this Court stated in its pivotal decision, Bartsch v. Irvine Co ., [w]hen Montana became a state, the policy of the open range continued, and the Legislature enacted various statutes which dealt with trespass by livestock and the necessity of lawful fences to support any action for trespass.  Bartsch, 149 Mont. at 408, 427 P.2d at 304 (emphasis added). ถ 41 The Territorial statutes at issue in Smith, as the parties and amici thoroughly address, are in fact substantially the same as several of the statutes at issue here. See ง 81-4-101, MCA (defining legal fence), [2] and ง 81-4-215, MCA (imposing on owners of stock liability for all trespass damages resulting from livestock breaking into any enclosure if the fence of the enclosure is legal pursuant to ง 81-4-101, MCA). ถ 42 Accordingly, the legal fence statutes did not create any affirmative duty to fence; rather, the open range legal fence statutes established only a standard of care for those landowners who chose to fence-out a livestock owner's animals. See ง 81-4-103, MCA (establishing liability for damages by reason of injury to stock in the event a fence not described in ง 81-4-101, MCA, is defective); ง 81-4-104, MCA (requiring that barbed wire fences be kept in repair so as not to injure livestock). ถ 43 Hence, the custom that a landowner must bear the financial burden of fencing-out his neighbor's cattle in order to recover damages โ rather than requiring the livestock owner to bear the far more onerous cost of fencing-in his herd โ became the statutory doctrine of Montana and other western states in determining liability for trespass. See, e.g., Smith, 2 Mont. at 197, 202 (holding that the lawful fence statute must be substantially complied with before a right of action accrues, and stating that the action was in the nature of trespass ... to recover damages, after the defendant's cattle broke and entered the farm or inclosure of the plaintiff, and destroyed his grain crop) (Wade, C.J., writing for the Court). See also Fant v. Lyman (1889), 9 Mont. 61, 22 P. 120 (discussing trespassing sheep). See generally Andes, 56 Mont.L.Rev. at 487 (indicating that most other western states passed statutes substantively identical to Montana's); Coby Dolan, Examining the Viability of Another Lord of Yesterday: Open Range Laws and Livestock Dominance in the Modern West, 5 Animal L. 147, 151-52 (1999) (discussing the custom of open range in the west and its early recognition by various courts). ถ 44 This statutory modification of the English common law strict liability rule was acknowledged and deemed proper by this Court. See Beinhorn, 27 Mont. at 89, 69 P. at 558 (stating that [b]y custom as well as by statute the common law of England has been so modified in Montana ... [t]his is undoubtedly a legitimate exercise of the police power). See also ง 1-1-108, MCA (originally enacted in 1895, and providing that in this state there is no common law in any case where the law is declared by statute); ง 1-2-103, MCA (originally enacted in 1895, and providing that statutes in derogation of the common law establish the law of this state respecting the subjects to which they relate, and their provisions and all proceedings under them are to be liberally construed with a view to effect their objects and to promote justice) (emphasis added). ถ 45 Thus, the statutory open range doctrine proceeded into the 20th century.