Opinion ID: 2449953
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The public status of Camps Canyon Road.

Text: The resolution of the Halvorsons' tort claims predicated upon injury to their property requires a determination of whether Camps Canyon Road is a public highway in order to evaluate whether an invasion of their rights has occurred. The district court found that Camps Canyon Road is a public highway by prescription as defined by I.C. § 40-202(3) (all highways used for a period of five (5) years, provided they shall have been worked and kept up at the expense of the public, or located and recorded by order of a board of commissioners, are highways). This conclusion was based on the district court's finding that [t]he record ... establishes that the public has used the road for more than five years, and that the Highway Department has worked and maintained the road at the expense of the public. In addition, the Plaintiffs do not refute that the Camps Canyon Road is a public highway. With regard to public use, the district court cited the Halvorsons' failure to dispute that Camps Canyon Road was a public highway, the official 1986 map of the Highway District, and the affidavit of Orland Arneberg describing public use of Camps Canyon Road dating back to the 1930s. As for the second requirement, that Camps Canyon Road be worked and kept up at the expense of the public, the Highway District provided an affidavit from Dan Payne in which he stated that he has personal knowledge of the Highway District's upkeep of Camps Canyon Road since at least 1974. The Halvorsons offered no evidence that Payne's affidavit is anything but reliable and, indeed, they rely on that affidavit at various points in their briefing. The Halvorsons dispute the district court's reliance on the 1986 Highway District map, citing Homestead Farms, Inc. v. Board of Commissioners of Teton County, 141 Idaho 855, 862, 119 P.3d 630, 637 (2005) (Eismann, J. concurring). The Halvorsons are correct in this regard. [I]f a road is not properly created as a public highway, its inclusion on an official county highway system map does not make it so, nor does it impose any requirement on a property owner to vacate what has never been established as a public roadway. Id. at 860, 119 P.3d at 635. However, the remaining evidence, Arneberg's affidavit, Payne's affidavit, and the Halvorsons' concession, remain undisturbed. If the moving party has demonstrated the absence of a question of material fact, the burden shifts to the nonmoving party to demonstrate an issue of material fact that will preclude summary judgment. Wattenbarger v. A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc., 150 Idaho 308, ___, 246 P.3d 961, 970 (2010) (citing I.R.C.P. 56(e)). Thus, when the Halvorsons argue that there is no evidence of extensive public use of [Camps Canyon Road] ... in the public or agency record to support the conclusion that Camps Canyon Road is a public highway, they are simply incorrect: there is evidence to support that proposition and, just as important, the Halvorsons offered no evidence to contradict that proposition. Even drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the Halvorsons, the Halvorsons have failed to demonstrate the existence of a genuine issue of material fact. The district court properly concluded that Camps Canyon Road is a public highway as defined in I.C. § 40-202(3).
The Halvorsons argue that it is not the province of the district court to establish the public nature of Camps Canyon Road. They cite Galvin v. Canyon County Highway District No. 4, for the proposition that the Highway District is not permitted to validate public rights on its own initiative except under certain circumstances. 134 Idaho 576, 579, 6 P.3d 826, 829 (2000). In effect, the Halvorsons argue that it is only through a validation proceeding initiated by an affected land-owner that the public nature of Camps Canyon Road can be determined and that courts may not make such a determination. This conclusion is incorrect. First, the statutory scheme provides not one but two routes for the establishment of a public highway. One route involves a hearing by the county commissioners. Because I.C. § 40-202(3) provides for establishment of a public highway as located and recorded by order of a board of commissioners, that method of establishing a highway obviously requires action of the county commissioners. However, no such requirement accompanies the process for the establishment of a highway by prescription. In the latter circumstance, a public highway exists where it is used for a period of five (5) years, provided [it] shall have been worked and kept up at the expense of the public.... I.C. § 40-202(3). When construing a statute, the words used must be given their plain, usual, and ordinary meaning, and the statute must be construed as a whole. Athay v. Stacey, 142 Idaho 360, 365, 128 P.3d 897, 902 (2005) (citing Waters Garbage v. Shoshone Cnty., 138 Idaho 648, 651, 67 P.3d 1260, 1263 (2003)). Here, the plain, usual and ordinary meaning of the text is that the use and upkeep of a highway by the public is sufficient to establish a highway without any additional hearings or action undertaken by the Highway District. Ordinarily, a validation proceeding as described in I.C. § 40-203A is the appropriate method to validate an existing highway or public right-of-way about which there is some kind of doubt, although [i]t does not allow for the creation of new public rights. Galvin, 134 Idaho at 579, 6 P.3d at 829. However, there is nothing within I.C. § 40-203A that precludes a finding by a court determining that Camps Canyon Road is a public highway when a cause of action implicates that question. The Halvorsons cite I.C. § 40-1310, which states that the commissioners of a highway district have exclusive general supervision and jurisdiction over all highways and public rights-of-way within their highway system.... I.C. § 40-1310(1). That statute also states that [t]he highway district has the power to receive highway petitions and lay out, alter, create and abandon and vacate public highways and public rights-of-way within their respective districts under the provisions of sections 40-202, 40-203 and 40-203A, Idaho Code. I.C. § 40-1310(5). Neither of these passages suggests that a court lacks the power to determine whether a highway district had established a public highway when faced with a cause of action that squarely presents that issue. We conclude that no validation proceeding was necessary in order for the district court to conclude that Camps Canyon Road was a public highway. [4] Based upon the evidence before the district court, Camps Canyon Road was a public highway no later than 1979.
The Halvorsons argue that they have also been deprived of their property without procedural due process. [5] Procedural due process requires that a party be provided with an opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner. Due process is not a concept rigidly applied to every adversarial confrontation, but instead is a flexible concept calling for such procedural protections as are warranted by the situation. Paul v. Bd. of Prof'l Discipline of Idaho State Bd. of Med., 134 Idaho 838, 843, 11 P.3d 34, 39 (2000) (internal citations and quotations omitted). This Court has previously found that, in cases of the establishment of a public highway, where a landowner has the opportunity to contest the establishment of a public highway, due process has been afforded. Ada Cnty. Highway Dist. v. Total Success Invs., LLC, 145 Idaho 360, 371, 179 P.3d 323, 334 (2008). Whether through this proceeding, the potential to bring an inverse condemnation claim, or the potential to quiet title over the land being used, the Halvorsons and their predecessors have had the opportunity to be heard on this issue. In addition to that, the Halvorsons were not denied the opportunity for a validation proceeding. [6] Instead, they instituted this suit to attempt to vindicate what they thought were their rights. The Halvorsons have been heard on this issue. Due process does not require that they prevail. While the Halvorsons do not explicitly raise a notice claim, that too would fail. The requirement that a highway be used continuously and publicly for a period of five years is in place precisely to ensure that where the public is using a portion of the land, the landowner has actual or constructive notice that the use is occurring and has the opportunity to challenge that use. In this way, it is analogous to a prescriptive easement or adverse possession. The purpose of the requirement that prescriptive use be open and notorious is to give the owner of the servient tenement knowledge and opportunity to assert his rights against the development of an easement by prescription. The open and notorious use must rise to the level reasonably expected to provide notice of the adverse use to a servient landowner maintaining a reasonable degree of supervision over his premises. Anderson v. Larsen, 136 Idaho 402, 406, 34 P.3d 1085, 1089 (2001). Camps Canyon Road's status as a public highway was established before the Halvorsons acquired their property. There is no dispute as to whether the Halvorsons were aware of the existence of Camps Canyon Road; rather, this dispute arises from the Halvorsons' erroneous beliefs as to the procedures that are required to establish a public highway and whether the dimension of such a highway is defined by use or by statute.
The Halvorsons also advance a takings claim. They argue that the right to use their land has been taken for public use without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. U.S. Const. amends. V, XIV. In addressing this question below, the district court concluded that the Halvorsons' takings claims fail because the Highway District's actions do not exceed its statutory authority or fall outside the scope of the right of way of Camps Canyon Road. However, even where the Highway District acted appropriately within the various statutes, this reasoning does not necessarily indicate that the application of those statutes might not be an unconstitutional taking. The district court did not address those possibilities. This Court has stated that [i]f a landowner believes the acquisition of a roadway pursuant to I.C. § 40-202 results in a taking, the landowner has four years from the accrual of the cause of action to bring a claim of inverse condemnation. Total Success Invs., 145 Idaho at 369, 179 P.3d at 332. The record discloses that Camps Canyon Road has been maintained by the public at least since 1974 and that it has been open to the public since the 1930s. As discussed above, the Halvorsons offer no argument that Camps Canyon Road has not been a public road since at least 1979. Using the 1979 date as a baseline, the Halvorsons' predecessors in interest would then have had four years to bring an action for a taking or an inverse condemnation action. I.C. § 5-224; BHA Invs., Inc. v. City of Boise, 141 Idaho 168, 176 n. 2, 108 P.3d 315, 323 n. 2 (2004) (a takings claim may be brought directly under the Fourteenth Amendment). Any ability to advance a claim for a taking expired in 1983. We observe that the Halvorsons purchased their property in 1996. One who purchases land expressly subject to an easement, or with notice, actual or constructive, that it is burdened with an existing easement, takes the land subject to the easement. Akers v. D.L. White Const., Inc., 142 Idaho 293, 301, 127 P.3d 196, 204 (2005) (quoting Checketts v. Thompson, 65 Idaho 715, 721, 152 P.2d 585, 587 (1944)). Because the Highway District established the public highway as of 1979 at the very latest, when the Halvorsons purchased the property, they did so subject to the full extent of the Camps Canyon Road easement. We therefore find that the district court did not err in finding that Camps Canyon Road is a public highway. We further find that the Halvorsons' takings arguments, due process arguments, and arguments regarding the district court's ability to determine the presence of a public highway are without merit.