Opinion ID: 889702
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Court's Misapplication of our Caselaw

Text: ¶ 60 That said, while the Court implies that we have, over the last 30 years, discussed and applied the provisions of § 70-17-112, MCA, in a way that is pertinent to the present case ( see Opinion, ¶ 14), the fact is that none of the easement cases cited by the Court have addressed the specific arguments raised by MRC here. First of all, almost none of the cited cases involved a secondary ditch easement or, more specifically, the application of § 70-17-112, MCA. Their irrelevance, therefore, is self-evident. [2] Secondly, the two cited cases that did involve a ditch easement (discussed below) are readily distinguishable from the present case. Before discussing those cases, however, it is necessary first to review what MRC is specifically arguing on appeal: &lhblk; The Ditch Owners have grave concerns over the District Court's reliance on an alleged `minimal' hindrance standard of their rights under § 70-17-112, MCA. The plain language of the statute does not allow for any encroachment or impairment of irrigation ditch owners' secondary easement rights on the basis that the encroachment only `minimally' interferes with ditch maintenance. &lhblk; The plain language of § 70-17-112, MCA, prohibits any impairment or encroachment of a ditch owner's secondary easement rights without the ditch owner's permission. . . . [T]he Court cannot insert `what has been omitted or to omit what has been inserted.' Section 1-2-101, MCA. (Emphasis in original.) &lhblk; The District Court inserted a standard into § 70-17-112, MCA, that cannot be found in the plain language of the statute. . . . [T]he District Court found Joukova's culvert/rock bridge to have `hindered' the Ditch Owners' ability to clean the Ditch. Yet, the court went one step too far in justifying Joukova's hindrance by qualifying the impairment as minimalinserting a `minimal' standard into § 70-17-112, MCA. Nowhere in § 70-17-112, MCA, is there an allowance for minimal encroachment or impairment of a secondary easement right. &lhblk; Joukova has provided no authority either statutory or common lawthat the District Court is entitled to insert a `minimal' standard into § 70-17-112, MCA. This is for good reason, as no such authority exists. Section 1-2-101, MCA, prevents district courts from inserting words into statutes. Here, the plain language of § 70-17-112, MCA, controls the resolution of this dispute: `[n]o person may encroach upon or otherwise impair any easement for a canal or ditch used for irrigation. . . .' The District Court's insertion of a `minimal' standard (in violation of § 1-2-101, MCA) to the statute must be reversed. (Ellipsis and brackets in original.) As will be seen, neither of the ditch cases cited by the Court addressed these arguments, as they were not made in those cases. The present case is the first in which we have been squarely presented with the question whether some encroachments or impairments are acceptable while others are not. It is bad enough that the Court answers this question incorrectly. It is worse that the Court cloaks its erroneous answer in the mantle of prior cases which did not even confront the question directly. ¶ 61 First, in Boylan v. Van Dyke, 247 Mont. 259, 806 P.2d 1024 (1991), the servient landowners (the Van Dykes) constructed a one-acre pond on their land. To do so, they placed a dam across Boylan's irrigation ditch (the Tudor Lane Ditch)a patent violation of his primary easement, incidentally. Boylan then filed suit, claiming that construction of the pond interfered with his ditch right to transport irrigation water down the Tudor Lane Ditch. Boylan, 247 Mont. at 261-62, 806 P.2d at 1025. The district court correspondingly framed the issue as whether the pond interfered with Mr. Boylan's use of the Tudor Lane Ditch, and if so, what the damages were. Boylan, 247 Mont. at 262, 806 P.2d at 1026. After personally examining the pond and the ditch, the judge concluded that the Complaint of the plaintiff that they were deprived of the waters of Spring Creek is dispelled. Boylan, 247 Mont. at 263, 806 P.2d at 1026. Bottom line, Mr. Boylan failed to present any evidence to support his claims of unlawful interference. Boylan, 247 Mont. at 266, 806 P.2d at 1028. On appeal, Boylan maintained that the construction of the pond was an unlawful interference with his ditch easement because the pond deprived him of irrigation water for his land and reduced the value of his land to half of what it was worth prior to construction of the pond and the destruction of his ditch. Boylan, 247 Mont. at 264, 806 P.2d at 1027. After reviewing the record in this case, however, we concluded that there is no evidence to support Mr. Boylan's claims. Boylan, 247 Mont. at 264-65, 806 P.2d at 1027. ¶ 62 The Court misstates our holding in Boylan, citing it for the propositions that uses not affecting the dominant owner's use of an easement will not trigger a finding of unreasonable interference, Opinion, ¶ 22 (emphasis added), and [s]ome permanent encroachments may not justify a finding of unreasonable interference, Opinion, ¶ 27 (emphasis added). The word unreasonable, however, does not appear anywhere in the Boylan decision. In point of fact, we never considered whether the interference alleged by Boylan was unreasonable. Rather, we concluded that he had simply failed to show interference at all. And this is why Boylan contributes nothing to the statutory analysis in the present case. At no point in that decision did we address whether a reasonable or minimal encroachment or impairment is permissible under the statute. While Boylan certainly could have pursued the claims which MRC has pursued here, given that the Van Dykes had erected a dam and created a pond in the ditch, Boylan merely claimed that the dam and pond deprived him of irrigation water for his land and reduced the value of his land. The district court found this to be factually unsupported. We likewise found no evidence to support Boylan's claims. The only point where we even purported to apply § 70-17-112, MCA, was in granting costs and attorney's fees to the Van Dykes as the prevailing party. Boylan, 247 Mont. at 267, 806 P.2d at 1029. ¶ 63 The second case, relied on heavily by the Court, is Engel v. Gampp, 2000 MT 17, 298 Mont. 116, 993 P.2d 701. See Opinion, ¶¶ 15, 18, 19, 25, 31. As author of the Engel opinion, however, I can state with assurance that we did not, in that case, address the arguments under consideration here. Contrary to the Court's insinuations, there was no question raised as to whether an encroachment upon or impairment of a secondary ditch easement violates § 70-17-112, MCA, no matter how minimal or reasonable it is. In fact, the district court in Engel concluded that the Gampps had encroached upon and impaired Engel's secondary easement, and no one disputed that conclusion on appeal. And there certainly was no discussion of whether the encroachment and impairment were unreasonablethe Court's misreading of Engel notwithstanding. Indeed, the primary question in the case was whether Engel had prevailed on her claims in the district court, thus justifying an award of costs and attorney's fees. Engel, ¶ 10. This necessitated a discussion of what her claims were, how the district court analyzed those claims, and whether she prevailed on themnothing more. Engel, ¶¶ 34-47. ¶ 64 Engel involved a ditch easement which began at the western end of the Gampps' property and flowed north, northeast, and then east, eventually passing through Engel's adjacent property. Engel, ¶ 12. The issue prompting the litigation concerned Engel's secondary access easement. There was a footpath along the ditch that was used for such purposes as regulating the head gates, cleaning out the ditch, and routine inspection. Engel, ¶ 12. This footpath was Engel's principal secondary easement for accessing the ditch. The problem was that vehicles could not use this route, and some of the repair and maintenance work required vehicular access. Engel, ¶¶ 13-14. Engel thus claimed she had an alternate secondary easement which allowed her to drive vehicles across the Gampps' property. Engel, ¶¶ 6, 17. Engel based this claim on historic use; however, she failed to show that she had ever attempted to establish, maintain, or improve a vehicle route over the Gampps' property. Engel, ¶¶ 17, 44. Furthermore, any such historic use would have involved negotiating a gate, which was usually locked, at the boundary of the Gampps' property. Engel's husband had put this gate in place back when the Engels held both their own property and the Gampps' property in common ownership, and he required that ditch users notify him before accessing the property. Engel, ¶ 18. ¶ 65 Accordingly, the district court concluded that Engel's secondary easement was along the footpath. Engel, ¶¶ 24, 41. The district court rejected her claim of an existing secondary easement across the Gampps' property based on historic use. Engel, ¶ 44. Instead, recognizing that vehicular access to the ditch was occasionally necessary, the district court established a new, additional secondary easement across the Gampps' property that she could use for this purpose. Engel, ¶¶ 24, 37, 41-44, 46. The district court defined the location and scope of this new easement by what the court thought was reasonably necessary for Engel and not unduly burdensome to the Gampps. Engel, ¶¶ 24, 44, 50, 52-55. The scope of this new easement included the gate at the boundary of the Gampps' property. Engel, ¶¶ 24, 46, 55. Hence, Engel was not a gate case (Opinion, ¶ 25) in the sense that a physical obstruction was placed across a formerly unobstructed access route. The gate was always there. It was within the scope of the secondary easement. ¶ 66 The district court concluded, however, that the Gampps had encroached upon and impaired Engel's secondary easement rights by intimidating and threatening her and by keeping the gate locked when she needed access. Engel, ¶¶ 25, 34, 47. Significantly, there was no discussion whatsoever by the district court as to whether this encroachment and impairment was unreasonable or minimal. Nor was there any discussion by this Court as to whether the Gampps' conduct amounted to unreasonable interference with Engel's secondary easement. The fact of the impediments was sufficient to violate the statute. See Engel, ¶¶ 36, 38, 47. ¶ 67 The Court's entire discussion (in the present case) of the common law of easements is premised on our citations in Engel to Laden v. Atkeson, 112 Mont. 302, 116 P.2d 881 (1941), and Gabriel v. Wood, 261 Mont. 170, 862 P.2d 42 (1993). Opinion, ¶¶ 14-15. As an initial matter, it should be noted that the Court misstates our citation to Gabriel in Engel. In Gabriel, which involved an obstruction to a primary easement (an ingress/egress road), we said that a gate may be constructed across the easement if it . . . does not interfere with reasonable use of the right-of-way. 261 Mont. at 177, 862 P.2d at 46. The Court, at ¶ 15 of the Opinion, quotes part of this language, but changes the word a gate to any obstruction of an easement (a dubious rewriting of Gabriel in itself), italicizes the word reasonable for added emphasis, and then, shockingly, attributes this passage as our observation in Engel. However, we did not observe in Engel that any obstruction of an easement must not interfere with reasonable use of the right-of-way. Opinion, ¶ 15 (emphasis in original, internal quotation marks omitted). This is a blatant rewriting of that case. The proposition for which we cited Gabriel in Engel was this: a servient owner may maintain a locked gate across an easement so long as it does not `interfere with the use and right reserved to the dominant tenement or estate.' Engel, ¶ 50 (quoting Gabriel, 261 Mont. at 176, 862 P.2d at 45). Contrary to the Court's discussion at ¶ 15 of the Opinion, we did not qualify the word interfere with the word reasonable. ¶ 68 More importantly, our citations to Laden and Gabriel in Engel concerned the rules for defining the location and scope of a secondary easement in the first instance. We did not cite Laden or Gabriel for the Court's proposition here that the common law controls over the plain and unambiguous language of § 70-17-112(2), MCA. Engel had complained that the district court should have enjoined the Gampps from interfering with her alternate secondary easement. Engel, ¶¶ 48, 50. Recall that the district court had only just determined the parameters of that new easement within the context of the Engel case. Engel, ¶ 42. We noted, however, that [t]here is substantial evidence that Engel's access for routine inspections and maintenance is, and always has been, `free and uninterrupted,' contrary to her assertion on appeal. Engel, ¶ 50. Then, after citing Gabriel for the foregoing proposition (that a servient owner may maintain a locked gate across an easement, so long as it does not interfere with the use and right reserved to the dominant tenement), we observed that the district court had fashioned Engel's new secondary easement for vehicular access, with the allowance for a locked gate, so that the Gampps would not be unreasonably burdened. Engel, ¶ 50. ¶ 69 In other wordsand this is the critical aspect of Engel that is apparently lost on the Court todaythe gate and the fact that it could be locked were an integral component of Engel's alternate secondary easement. Engel could not claim interference with her easement based on the locked gate for the simple reason that she never had the right to unfettered access in the first place. Of course, the Gampps were required to unlock the gate upon receiving notice that Engel needed to access the ditch over their property. Engel, ¶ 52. But a careful reading of Engel shows that our discussion at ¶¶ 50-52 stands for the unremarkable proposition that a gate, which is kept locked except when Engel serves notice that she needs access, is an inherent limitation on her alternate secondary easement. This is an important distinction from the present case, where the culvert and bridge were never an inherent limitation on MRC's secondary ditch easement. Rather, MRC's easementthe validity of which is not in dispute, and the location of scope of which are not at issue entitles MRC to an obstructed ditch, the entire length of which can be maintained with a bulldozer as established through prescriptive use. ¶ 70 Accordingly, there are two points to be understood about Engel. First, we did not hold that some interference with a ditch easement is acceptable under the statute while other interference is not, depending on what we think is reasonable. We were not presented with that argument. Moreover, Engel's claim of interference had no merit anyway, given that the access restrictions about which she complained were within the scope of her new alternate secondary easement as fashioned by the district court. Second, we did not hold, or even intimate, in Engel that the touchstone of analysis under § 70-17-112(2), MCA, is unreasonable interference. Rather, the Court today manufactures that proposition out of whole cloth, despite the unambiguous statutory prohibition against encroachments and impairments of any kind. ¶ 71 In this regard, it is noteworthy that the Court, at ¶ 23, summarily dismisses two precedents that contradict its approach here. In Kephart v. Portmann, 259 Mont. 232, 855 P.2d 120 (1993), after the Portmanns exercised their right to enter, repair, and maintain their ditch under § 70-17-112(1), MCA, the Kepharts filed suit and thereby forced the Portmanns into court to defend the existence of the ditch right and corresponding secondary easement. We held that the Kepharts' lawsuit constituted an impairment of the Portmanns' easement under § 70-17-112(2), MCA. Kephart, 259 Mont. at 239, 855 P.2d at 124. The words unreasonable interference appear nowhere in our decision. Likewise, in Byrum v. Andren, 2007 MT 107, 337 Mont. 167, 159 P.3d 1062, after the easement holders accessed their ditch for maintenance purposes, the Byrums filed suit alleging trespass. We held that the filing of the trespass claim impaired and interfered with the easement holders' rights under § 70-17-112, MCA. Byrum, ¶ 50. Nowhere did we analyze whether this impairment and interference was unreasonable. The fact of impairment and interference was enoughas the statute contemplates. ¶ 72 The Court contends that our reasoning in Byrum, ¶ 46, is contrary to the statute's hard-and-fast rule. Opinion, ¶ 31. Again, as author of the Byrum opinion, I can state with assurance that we did not, in that case, address the arguments under consideration here. Moreover, what we held in the cited paragraph of Byrum was simply this: Respondents allege physical interference [with their ditch rights], namely that Byrums had continually confronted Respondents while they attempted to maintain the Ditch, blocked Respondents from accessing the headgate, and verbally harassed Respondents. The District Court found that the Byrums had not denied Respondents access to the headgate and had not prevented water from being conveyed down the Ditch. Testimony from trial indicates that the Byrums did occasionally block Respondents from using the headgates on the Ditch, but that the Byrums eventually allowed access. Evidence in the record supports the District Court's finding that Byrums did not physically deny Respondents' access to the headgate. The court's finding is supported by substantial evidence and is not clearly erroneous in this regard. Byrum, ¶ 46. We were not presented with and did not address the question whether some interference is reasonable while other interference is not. ¶ 73 But even if it could be said that Byrum, or any of our other cases, is authority for the Court's approach of engrafting language onto a clear and unambiguous statute (which I do not believe to be the case), then our cases are wrong and should be corrected, not perpetuated. State v. Stiffarm, 2011 MT 9, ¶ 18, 359 Mont. 116, 250 P.3d 300 ([W]e cannot reconcile our duty to apply legislation as written with the decisions in these [prior] cases. We accordingly expressly overrule [the prior cases].). As Winston Churchill is reported to have said: If you simply take up the attitude of defending a mistake, there will be no hope of improvement. ¶ 74 In sum, the Court cherry-picks and misquotes language from a variety of cases most of which have nothing to do with ditch easementsto justify its foray into the common law and its application of an unreasonable interference standard in lieu of the statutory no encroachment or impairment standard. The fact is that none of the foregoing cases is authority for the Court's holding that an encroachment upon or impairment of a ditch easement is permissible, notwithstanding § 70-17-112(2), MCA, if the encroachment or impairment interferes reasonably with the easement holder's rights. More to the point, none of our cases stand for the proposition that we may dilute the clear and unqualified statutory standard in favor of our own subjective reasonableness analysis.