Opinion ID: 2829230
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Disclosure of Risk Requirement

Text: For almost twenty-five years, the state has taken the further step of informing beachfront property purchasers of the rolling nature of the easement burdening their property. Amendments to the OBA in 1985 make “pellucid that once an easement on the dry beach is established, its landward boundary may therefore ‘roll,’ including over private property ”. Severance v. Patterson , 566 F.3d 490, 506 (5th Cir. 2009) (Wiener, J., dissenting) (emphasis in original); see also Act of May 24, 1985, 69th Leg., R.S., ch . 350, § 1, 1985 Tex. Gen. Laws 1419 (codified as Tex. Nat. Res. Code § 61.025). Sellers of property on or near the coastline are required to include in the sales contract a “Disclosure Notice Concerning Legal and Economic Risks of Purchasing Coastal Real Property Near a Beach.” Tex. Nat. Res. Code § 61.025(a). The notice specifically warns that If you own a structure located on coastal real property near a gulf coast beach, it may come to be located on the public beach because of coastal erosion and storm events. ... Owners of structures erected seaward of the vegetation line (or other applicable easement boundary) or that become seaward of the vegetation line as a result of natural processes such as shoreline erosion are subject to a lawsuit by the State of Texas to remove the structures. Tex. Nat. Res. Code § 61.025 (a) (emphasis added). The language of the Act itself clearly identifies the line of vegetation as an easement boundary and clearly recognizes the transient nature of these boundary lines. The vegetation line, “given the vagaries of nature, will always be in a state of intermittent flux[ ,]” and consequently, “[s] hifts in the vegetation line do not create new easements; rather they expand (or in the case of seaward shifts, reduce) the size and reach of one dynamic easement.” Severance v. Patterson , 566 F.3d 490, 506 (5th Cir. 2009) (Wiener, J., dissenting). Severance purchased her properties with contracts that notified her of these risks and nature of the rolling easement.