Opinion ID: 1182352
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF McBRYDE I

Text: While the constitutionality of McBryde I was not one of the issues to which the court directed the parties to file briefs on rehearing, it is my opinion that the court should have dealt with this aspect of the case. In view of the wholly unexpected nature of the court's holdings in McBryde I, the parties of course could not have been expected to raise their constitutional claims as part of their appeals from the decision of the trial court. Since the parties asserted constitutional grounds for the reversal of McBryde I at the first possible instance โ in their petitions for rehearing โ their arguments in this respect are properly before the court, cf. Brinkerhoff-Faris Trust & Savings Co. v. Hill, 281 U.S. 673, 678, 50 S.Ct. 451, 74 L.Ed. 1107 (1930), and therefore I consider myself bound to discuss them here. The due process clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution and article I, sections 4 and 18 of the State Constitution forbid the State from taking private property without just compensation. This prohibition speaks to all instrumentalities of state government equally, restraining the courts from engineering unconstitutional takings no less than the legislature. See Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 241, 17 S.Ct. 581, 41 L.Ed. 979 (1897). See generally Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 14-15, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161 (1948), and cases cited therein. Although as a general rule judges are free to overrule prior cases which changed circumstances and perceptions reveal to have been unwisely decided, there are constitutional limits on their power to do so. Compare Brinkerhoff-Faris Trust & Savings Co. v. Hill, supra 281 U.S. at 681 n. 8, 50 S.Ct. 451 (Brandeis, J.) with Hughes v. State of Washington, 389 U.S. 290, 294, 88 S.Ct. 438, 19 L.Ed.2d 530 (1967) (Stewart, J., concurring). See generally Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 221, 37 S.Ct. 524, 61 L.Ed. 1086 (1917) (Holmes, J., dissenting). In particular, when prior judicial precedent has established unequivocally a certain property right, a court may not subsequently declare that the right never existed when the consequence of such a holding is to frustrate the expectations of parties who justifiably relied on prior law in the management of their affairs. See, e.g., Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972); Muhlker v. New York & Harlem R.R., 197 U.S. 544, 25 S.Ct. 522, 49 L.Ed. 872 (1905); cf. N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 454-458, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958). Water rights associated with the ownership of land have always been regarded as property in Hawaiian jurisprudence. See Peck v. Bailey, 8 Haw. 658, 661-662 (1867); Kaneohe Ranch Co. v. Ah On, 11 Haw. 275 (1898). Specifically, the cases discussed previously in this opinion have held uniformly and without ambiguity that the successor in interest to the konohiki of an ahupuaa takes full title to all surplus water arising on his land, see pt. II.C. supra and that the same right devolves upon the successor in interest to the konohiki of an ili kupono. Territory v. Gay, supra . Likewise, prior case law in this jurisdiction has established with clarity that privately owned water is freely transferable to lands other than those to which it is appurtenant. See pt. III.D.2. supra. Gay and Robinson has expended large sums of money in the development and transportation of the surplus water which prior decisions of this court indicated that it owned, and the other private parties to this action have purchased their land, invested in irrigation systems, and entered into contractual relationships with buyers of water, all in reliance on the principle of free transferability of water rights espoused by a long line of Hawaii cases. In the circumstances, the decision of McBryde I that surplus water is owned by the State and that private water rights are appurtenant exclusively to the parcels of land on which they originate must be viewed as a retroactive taking of property theretofore recognized as privately owned. A case in point is Muhlker v. New York & Harlem R.R., supra . In 1888, Muhlker bought a plot adjacent to a strip of land used for surface-level railroad tracks. In 1891, he erected a five story building on his parcel, at a time when the existing case law of New York held that a property owner's easements of light and air could not be acquired through prescription by a railroad company whose tracks were on the ground level of an adjacent piece of land. Muhlker sued to enjoin the railroad from erecting an elevated railroad which would have interfered with these easements, and an injunction was issued by the trial court and affirmed by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on the basis of the prior New York cases directly in point. The New York Court of Appeals, however, reversed in an opinion which in function overruled the prior cases and held that Muhlker's easements of light and air could be eliminated without compensation. This decision was in turn reversed by the United States Supreme Court on the ground that in overruling its prior cases, the New York Court of Appeals effectively took Muhlker's property rights (the easements of light and air) in violation of the fourteenth amendment. The Court noted that prior New York precedents establishing these rights were unambiguous, and that Muhlker had bought his land and made improvements thereon in reliance on the assurances of these precedents. This coalescence of well-established property rights and Muhlker's genuine reliance on the permanency thereof meant that the New York courts could not eliminate those rights without compensation, even though as a policy matter such a holding might be advantageous to the people of the state. In a subsequent decision, Chicago & Alton R.R. v. Tranbarger, 238 U.S. 67, 75, 35 S.Ct. 678, 59 L.Ed. 204 (1915), the Court held that the doctrine of Muhlker extended to property rights pertain[ing] closely to the use and enjoyment of land, but not to the right to maintain artificial structures inherently inimicable to the rights of other property owners. Other cases indicated that a judicial decision does not constitute an unconstitutional taking of property unless it cannot be reconciled with prior unambiguous holdings on the subject. Compare Demorest v. City Bank Farmers Trust Co., 321 U.S. 36, 64 S.Ct. 384, 88 L.Ed. 526 (1944) with Brinkerhoff-Faris Trust & Savings Co., supra . Only if the judicial decision is a perverse reading of [prior] law, will the limitation on property rights effected by it be deemed an unconstitutional taking. O'Neil v. Northern Colorado Irrigation District, 242 U.S. 20, 26, 37 S.Ct. 7, 61 L.Ed. 123 (1916) (Holmes, J.); see St. Anthony Falls Water Power Co. v. St. Paul Water Commissioners, 168 U.S. 349, 371, 18 S.Ct. 157, 42 L.Ed. 497 (1897) (the test is whether the new case is inconsistent with or opposed to any of [the court's] former decisions). Notwithstanding their limits, the basic principles of Muhlker still stand, as the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Stewart in Hughes v. State of Washington, 389 U.S. 290, 294, 88 S.Ct. 438, 19 L.Ed.2d 530 (1967), illustrates. Hughes was an action by Mrs. Hughes, owner of upland property that had been conveyed by the United States prior to Washington's statehood, against the State of Washington. At issue was title to accretions which had formed over the years on Mrs. Hughes' property by the ocean. Mrs. Hughes based her case on a Washington Supreme Court decision which held twenty years previously that title to gradual accretions vested in the owner of land adjoining the ocean; however, the Washington Supreme Court in her case overruled the prior decision and held that such accretions belonged to the state. On certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, eight of the justices concluded that the decision in Mrs. Hughes' case should be reversed on the ground that title to accretions to land granted by the United States was governed by federal, not state law, and that under the federal decisions the owner of adjacent land also owned any accretions thereto. It was the opinion of Justice Stewart, however, that federal law controlled the disposition of only those accretions which formed on Mrs. Hughes' land prior to Washington's statehood in 1889. For accretions which formed thereafter, he concluded, state law governed. Justice Stewart was therefore forced to consider whether the reversal by the Washington Supreme Court of its prior opinion on the subject of title to accretions constituted a taking without just compensation of Mrs. Hughes' property interest in post-1889 accretions to her land. He indicated the appropriate line of analysis to be as follows: To the extent that the decision of the Supreme Court of Washington on that issue arguably conforms to reasonable expectations, we must of course accept it as conclusive. But to the extent that it constitutes a sudden change in state law, unpredictable in terms of the relevant precedents, no such deference would be appropriate. For a State cannot be permitted to defeat the constitutional prohibition against taking property without due process of law by the simple device of asserting retroactively that the property it has taken never existed at all. Whether the decision here worked an unpredictable change in state law thus inevitably presents a federal question for the determination of this Court. Id. at 296-297, 88 S.Ct. at 442.