Opinion ID: 2288213
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Heading: The Riparian Rights on the Cove

Text: The now superseded Art. 54, Sec. 46 provided: Right to make improvements in front of land on navigable river. The proprietor of land bounding on any of the navigable waters of this State shall be entitled to the exclusive right of making improvements into the waters in front of his said land; such improvements and other accretions as above provided for shall pass to the successive owners of the land to which they are attached, as incident to their respective estates. But no such improvement shall be so made as to interfere with the navigation of the stream of water into which the said improvement is made. For a history of this act and its predecessors see Mutual Chemical Co. v. Mayor and City Council, 33 F. Supp. 881 (D. Md. 1940). The appellants claim that under the wording of this statute the improvements they have erected are in front of their land and hence they are entitled to complete ownership over all of the bulkhead, notwithstanding the fact that the Hubbards had a riparian course on the cove. There is no question that a bulkhead is that type of waterfront structure which constitutes an improvement under Sec. 46. It is certainly like other structures which are subservient to the land, and which used in connection with the land, enhance its value or enlarge its commercial or agricultural facilities, or other utility, to an extent the land alone would be incapable of, and in this way `improve' it. Hess v. Muir, 65 Md. 586 (1886). See also Boston Molasses Co. v. Commissioner of Internal Rev., 155 F.2d 45 (1946) (describing a particular bulkhead). But see 50 Opinions of the Attorney General 452 (Md. 1965) (restricting massive landfills under Sec. 46). In one of our most recent expressions on conflicting riparian rights under Sec. 46, Causey v. Gray, 250 Md. 380, 387, 243 A.2d 575 (1968), Judge Barnes observed that: The owner of the fast land, however, has a common law right to land formed by accretion adjacent to the fast land and has the right of access to the navigable part of the river in front of his fast land, with the right to make a landing, wharf or pier in front of his fast land, subject, however, to general rules and regulations imposed by the public authorities necessary to protect the rights of the public. When the statutory law grants the right to a riparian owner to extend his lot or to improve out to the limits prescribed by the public authorities, the riparian owner receives a `franchise ÔÇö a vested right, peculiar in its nature but a quasi property of which the lot owner cannot be lawfully deprived without his consent.' B. & O.R.R. Co. v. Chase , 43 23, 36 (1875). When the lot owner makes improvements in front of his lot, complete title then vests in him in the improvements provided it is in front of his lot and does not appropriate the riparian rights of his neighbors. B. & O.R.R. Co. v. Chase, 43 Md. at 36-37. (Emphasis added.) In that last sentence lies the crux of this dispute. We have often been called upon to determine the respective rights of riparian owners whose properties adjoined each other at right angles. In those cases, except where consent or a prior patent was involved, we have stood by the rule that adjoining owners on a concave shore must share available space for wharfing. Cahill v. Baltimore, 173 Md. 450, 196 A. 305 (1938); Baltimore City v. Steamboat Co., 104 Md. 485, 65 A. 353 (1906); Baltimore v. St. Agnes Hospital, 48 Md. 419, 421 (1878); B. & O.R.R. Co. v. Chase, 43 Md. 23, 36-38 (1875), Tiffany, Law of Real Property,  1228, p. 634, and 65 C.J.S., Navigable Waters,  84. The appellants acknowledge this rule but they claim that in at least two Maryland cases this Court has recognized the superior rights of fronting owners over those of mere side owners. We do not believe that either case they cite will sustain their position. McMurray v. Baltimore, 54 Md. 103 (1880) may have involved front and side owners on a right angled shore line, but that case decided the city's right to construct a wharf at the end of a dedicated public street although the adjoining owner might still retain the underlying fee. Similarly, in Cahill v. Baltimore, 173 Md. 450, 196 A. 305 (1938) side and front owners were involved, but that case was decided primarily on the issue of alleged official discrimination in denying the plaintiff the right to wharf out into navigable waters. Indeed, Cahill itself said: What in general, or in a particular case, may constitute `front' of land from which the Code provisions the owner may make improvements, and what, on the other hand, would be the side lines, are questions which may be reserved for further argument in another case, for it is found unnecessary to the decision of this one. Balto. & O.R. Co. v. Chase, 43 Md. 23, 36; Baltimore v. Steamboat Co., 104 Md. 484, 498, 65 A. 353; LaBranche's Heirs v. Montegut, 47 La. Ann. 674, 17 So. 247; Meier v. St. Louis, 180 Mo. 391, 79 S.W. 955; Carr v. Kingsbury, 111 Cal. App. 165, 295 P. 586. It is now time to resolve those questions, at least insofar as they relate to Sec. 46 of Art. 54. It would normally be incumbent upon us to define the term in front of, for the appellants make a great to-do about which direction whose house faces. We do not find this distinction relevant under this statute. It is true that some street front cases involving corner lots have had to recognize the difference between front and side lines, M.&C.C. v. Swinski, 235 Md. 262, 264-5, 201 A.2d 368 (1964); Restivo v. Princeton Constr. Co., 223 Md. 516, 523-7, 165 A.2d 766 (1960); Wood v. Stehrer, 119 Md. 143, 146, 86 A. 128 (1912) and Broeder v. Sucher Bros., 331 Mich. 323, 49 N.W.2d 314, 316, 30 A.L.R.2d 554 (1951), but few cases involving waterfronts have ever intimated such a distinction. Some of the cases cited in Cahill v. Baltimore, supra , have done so, and only Dooley v. Proctor & Gamble Mfg. Co., 77 Misc. 398, 137 N.Y.S. 737, 740 (1912) has explicitly given a front owner rights superior to a side owner. That case, however, was promptly reversed and remanded on other grounds in 158 App. Div. 429, 143 N.Y.S. 650, (App. Div. 1913) with the suggestion at 655 that the conflict should be resolved by apportioning the rights to the tidal flats among the owners of the adjacent uplands. In one respect the initial opinion in the Dooley case is instructive, for even there the front or side of the respective properties was determined by the shoreline's relationship to an offshore bulkhead line and not by the wholly fortuitous location of the owner's front door. The subsequent opinion, by the Appellate Division, eschewed even this distinction in favor of apportionment on a concave shore. We think that the wording of Sec. 46 suggests a similar refusal to indulge in discrimination between riparian owners. That section speaks first of the owner's land bounding on any of the navigable waters of this State and then of the waters in front of his said land (emphasis added.) To achieve the appellants' distinction would require the statute to read: In front of the front of the owners' said land, a semantical subtlety neither the plain meaning nor the intent of the statute will bear. We hold that in this context front of and bounding are synonymous terms and only denote that any property bounding on navigable waters of this State, whether it be by the front, side, or back line, has riparian rights. See Rombauer v. Compton Heights Church, 328 Mo. 1, 40 S.W.2d 545, 551 (1931). If two property owners adjoining each other on a concave shore, elbow or finger come into conflict over their rights to extend improvements into the water they are required to apportion their respective rights or otherwise reach an agreement on how their co-equal rights should be divided. In any event, one property owner cannot completely deprive the other of his right to extend out. Causey v. Gray, 250 Md. at 387; Baltimore City v. Steamboat Co., 104 Md. at 498; Baltimore v. St. Agnes' Hospital, 48 Md. at 421; B. & O.R.R. Co. v. Chase, 43 Md. at 36-37; and Dugan v. Baltimore, 5 G. & J. 357 (1883). In Dugan the Court considered the respective rights of riparian owners with property at right angles to each other under the Acts of 1745, Ch. 9, the predecessor statute to Art. 54, Sec. 46. This terse observation was made at 367-68: The improvements authorized and encouraged were those made by improvers in front of their own lots, not of their neighbors. The Legislature never designed such invasion of the rights of private property; nor indeed had they the power to legalize it, if such had been their intention. This same strong sentiment over legislative intent was expressed in Councilman v. LeCompte, 179 Md. 427, 21 A.2d 535 (1941) which was faced with the conflicting rights of right angle owners to build a duck blind in front of their properties. Significantly the statute involved there, Code (1939), Art. 99, Sec. 47 (a) (now superseded by Art. 66C,  154), used the terms in front of and land bordering on any waters of this State. Significantly also, the property line between the two tracts had a location similar to the Hubbards' sixth course. The Court would not permit the extension of that line over the water to determine the respective rights of the parties. Judge Forsythe, speaking for the Court, said at 431: But had that been done, the line would have run directly across the water front of Keester's property, with the result that Keester would have been denied his right to erect a blind in front of his property. Clearly that was not the intention of the statute. The unmistakable purpose of the statute was to protect, and not to deprive, each land owner's right to have a duck blind. See also Boyd v. Schaefer, 184 Md. 621, 42 A.2d 721 (1945); Wampler v. LeCompte, 159 Md. 222, 150 A. 455 (1930) affirmed 282 U.S. 172 (1930) and Sheehy v. Thomas, 155 Md. 688, 142 A. 506 (1928). Finally, Ockerhausen v. Tyson, 71 Conn. 31, 40 A. 1041 (1898) is, with the addition of a slightly more dramatic result, close to being a factual alter ego to this case. There the defendant owned two-thirds of the land around a bottle shaped cove, including the back line which faced out upon the river. The plaintiffs only owned the land on one side of the cove. The action arose when the defendant began to fill in the cove and wharf out over its mouth into the river. When the plaintiffs sought an injunction against this activity, he defended by asserting that their frontage was on the river and that as to the interior of the cove they had no rights superior to his. By the time the litigation was over the defendant had filled in the entire cove. The Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut at 40 A. 1042 expressed the following opinion on the conflicting rights of the owners: The defendant, by filling up the flats immediately adjacent to the plaintiffs' upland, which were the subject of their riparian rights and franchise, converted the shore of the river within the cove . .. into real estate. He thus did what only the plaintiffs could lawfully do, and the land so made became an accession to their land, precisely as if they had made it.... Each had also a certain right to reclaim the flats which adjoined his premises. It was one to be exercised with due regard to the like rights held by others. Its limits were to be determined by the simple rule, `Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas.' [Use your own property in such a manner as not to injure that of another.] (Citations omitted) This unerring test of human conduct forbade the defendant, on the strength of his ownership of the land opposite to the mouth of the cove and the channel of the river, to fill out to that channel in such a way as to blot the whole cove out of existence. It also precluded his gaining title by reclamation to the shore immediately contiguous to the plaintiffs' land. Although the principles expressed in the Ockerhausen case are only expositive of the common law right of a riparian owner to wharf out to deep water and not of expanded statutory rights as those in Art. 54, Sec. 46, those principles and their logic are firmly embedded in the common law of this State. Causey v. Gray, 250 Md. 380, 387 (1968); accord, B. & O.R.R. Co. v. Chase, 43 Md. 23, 35 (1875); United States v. Groen, 72 F. Supp. 713, 720-21 (D.D.C. 1947) aff'd sub. nom. United States v. Martin, 177 F.2d 733 (D.C. Cir.1949) and United States v. 222.0 acres of land, etc., State of Maryland (Assateague Island Opinion No. 1) 306 F. Supp. 138, 151 (D. Md. 1969). Article 54, Sec. 46 has not abrogated that common law but expanded it, although the new wetlands act (Laws of 1970, ch. 241,  2) has repealed and (Art. 66C,  720) replaced Art. 54, Sec. 46 with a more limited right to erect shoreline improvements. The appellants, of course, come under the saving provision of that act. Art. 66C,  731. But whether their claim is asserted under the successor or the predecessor of Sec. 46, or for that matter under the common law itself, the appellants do not have the right to interfere with the riparian rights of their neighbors, without their consent. And to the problem presented by the consent actually given in this case we shall now turn. The appellants contend that because of the Hubbards' consent, conduct, acquiescence and failure to object or to assert title while the work progressed, they should have been estopped from later asserting even bare legal title over the 40 foot section of the bulkhead. We think that this scattergun approach does not hit the mark. Judge Mace concluded that Hubbard had given Owen an irrevocable license because of the consent he actually gave to the construction of the bulkhead. Since the Hubbards did not cross-appeal as to the extent of the permanent easement granted in the decree and the Owens did not question it in their appeal it has become the law of this case. Moreover, we fail to see how the Owens can ask for much more than a reasonable right of access to the bulkhead, backfill and supporting structures for the purpose of maintaining the improvement as well as an unobstructed right of ingress and egress over the bulkhead to small craft attached to it. We do note, in response to certain questions raised at oral argument, that the decree would prohibit Hubbard from building onto the bulkhead without Owens' consent. As for the estoppel argument, Hubbard's conduct was never inconsistent with the permission he gave to Owen, although we recognize that he may not have fully considered his property rights when the consent was given. Owen first wanted a harbor, and then decided that he needed a bulkhead to protect it. Hubbard obviously had no objection to this substantial improvement to the cove or his shore and was cooperative to the point of verbally allowing Owen to place substantial lateral supporting structures well within the shoreline on his own property. While Owen himself might have thought all of the bulkhead, with the exception of the lateral supports, was attached to and located along the shoreline of his property, his actions were not so obvious as to put Hubbard on notice that he was claiming more than a license. We see no grounds for granting additional rights based on estoppel beyond those which Judge Mace has already given to the appellants. Cf. M. & C.C. v. Chesapeake, 233 Md. 559, 578, and 581-82, 197 A.2d 821 (1964). Decree affirmed. Costs to be paid by the appellants.