Opinion ID: 2388227
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Public Trust in Intertidal Land Act Constitutes an Unconstitutional Taking

Text: The legislature, by enacting in 1986 the Public Trust in Intertidal Land Act, 12 M.R.S.A. §§ 571-573, declared that the intertidal lands of the State are impressed with a public trust, id. § 571, and that those rights of the public include a right to use intertidal land for recreation, id. § 573(1)(B). [19] The legislature thus imposed upon all intertidal land (defined by the Act in accordance with the Colonial Ordinance) an easement for use by the general public for recreation without limitation. The Superior Court held the Public Trust in Intertidal Land Act unconstitutional as a violation of the separation of powers provision of the Maine Constitution, art. III. We do not reach the separation of powers question because the Act takes for public use much greater rights in the intertidal zone than are reserved by the common law and therefore the Act on its face constitutes an unconstitutional taking of private property. We agree therefore with the Superior Court that the Act is unconstitutional, but we ground our holding on the violation of the Takings Clauses of both the Maine and the United States Constitutions. See Me. Const. art. I, § 21; U.S. Const. amend. V. The Public Trust in Intertidal Land Act in creating a public easement for recreation leaves that term both undefined and unlimitedwith the sole exceptions that the public recreation may not interfere with any structure or improvement lawfully maintained on intertidal land, nor may motorized vehicles other than watercraft be used there unless authorized by the State or municipality. See 12 M.R.S.A. § 573(2)(B), (D). The very nature of those exceptions emphasizes the all-inclusive recreational easement created by the Act over intertidal land owned in fee by the upland property holders. By its use of the unqualified term recreation, the Act permits both individual and organized recreation of any form and nature. Members of the public in unrestricted numbers are thus given the right to come on this private property, not only for bathing, sunbathing, and walking as general recreation, but also for any other recreational activity whatever including, for example, ball games and athletic competitions, camping for extended hours, operation of vehicles (including even ATVs and other motorized vehicles, with State or municipal authorization), nighttime beach parties, and horseback riding. This comprehensive easement for public recreation sharply differs in nature and magnitude from the easement for fishing, fowling, and navigation and related uses that the common law alone reserved in favor of the public out of the fee ownership of intertidal land it at the same time vested in the upland owners. The Act thus constitutes a taking of private property for a public use. Since the Act provides no compensation for the landowners whose property is burdened by the general recreational easement taken for public use, it violates the prohibition contained in both our State and Federal Constitutions against the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Our analysis and conclusion are the same under both Constitutions. Long ago this court said: [The Takings Clause] was designed to operate and it does operate to prevent the acquisition of any title to land or to an easement in it or to a permanent appropriation of it, from an owner for public use, without the actual payment or tender of a just compensation for it. Cushman v. Smith, 34 Me. 247, 265 (1852) (emphasis added). In their 1974 Opinion of the Justices already discussed above, the justices of the Massachusetts court have already answered the very question now before us. 365 Mass. 681, 313 N.E.2d 561. They declared that a proposed statute merely to create a public footpath along the intertidal zone, a much more limited and less intrusive public easement than that taken by the Maine Act, would constitute an unconstitutional taking of property from the owners of the fee. The Massachusetts justices' reasoning has precise relevance to the case at bar: The elusive border between the police power of the State and the prohibition against taking of property without compensation has been the subject of extensive litigation and commentary. See Bosselman, Callies & Banta, The Taking Issue (1973). But these difficulties need not concern us here. The permanent physical intrusion into the property of private persons, which the bill would establish, is a taking of property within even the most narrow construction of that phrase possible under the Constitutions of the Commonwealth and of the United States. It is true that the bill does not completely deprive private owners of all use of their seashore property in the sense that a formal taking does. But the case is readily distinguishable from such regulation as merely prohibits some particular use or uses which are harmful to the public. See Commonwealth v. Alger, 7 Cush. 53, 86 (1851). The interference with private property here involves a wholesale denial of an owner's right to exclude the public. If a possessory interest in real property has any meaning at all it must include the general right to exclude others. Nichols, Eminent Domain (Rev. 3d ed.) § 5.1[1] (1970). Id., 365 Mass. at 689, 313 N.E.2d at 568. The public recreational easement taken by the Maine Act over oceanfront owners' land must be distinguished from the governmental action regulating private land use that we have in recent years examined under the Takings Clause. See, e.g., Hall v. Board of Envtl. Protection, 528 A.2d 453 (Me.1987) (restriction on building on sand dunes); Curtis v. Main, 482 A.2d 1253, 1258 (Me.1984) (zoning restrictions); Seven Islands Land Co. v. Maine Land Use Regulation Comm'n, 450 A.2d 475, 482-83 (Me.1982) (restriction on timber harvesting). In those cases of regulatory taking we make a factual inquiry into the substantiality of the diminution in value of the property involved. Id. at 482. That analysis becomes inappropriate, however, when the issue before us is the constitutionality of a statute that authorizes a physical invasion of private property. [20] As one scholar has written: The modern significance of physical occupation is that courts, while they sometimes do hold nontrespassory injuries compensable, never deny compensation for a physical takeover. Michelman, Property, Utility, and Fairness: Comments on the Ethical Foundations of Just Compensation Law, 80 Harv.L.Rev. 1165, 1184 (1967) (emphasis in original). In Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U.S. 825, 107 S.Ct. 3141, 97 L.Ed.2d 677 (1987), where California had conditioned a seaside building permit upon the private owners' mak[ing] an easement across their beachfront available to the public on a permanent basis, the Court found an unconstitutional taking, however slight the adverse economic impact on the owners, saying: We think a permanent physical occupation has occurred, for purposes of that rule, where individuals are given a permanent and continuous right to pass to and fro, so that the real property may continuously be traversed, even though no particular individual is permitted to station himself permanently upon the premises. Id. at 832, 107 S.Ct. at 3145, 97 L.Ed.2d at 686. See also Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 102 S.Ct. 3164, 73 L.Ed.2d 868 (1982) (invalidating New York law prohibiting landlord from interfering with cable television facilities placed on his premises); Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 100 S.Ct. 383, 62 L.Ed.2d 332 (1979) (denying federal government's claim of public's right to navigate into a private pond opened to the sea by its owner in creating a marina). The fact that the common law already has reserved to the public an easement in intertidal land for fishing, fowling, and navigation, and for related uses (even though the specific objects of that easement may be pursued for recreation as well as sustenance and profit) does not mean that the State can, without paying compensation to the private landowners, take in addition a public easement for general recreation. [21] See Opinion of the Justices, 365 Mass. 681, 313 N.E.2d 561. The common law has reserved to the public only a limited easement; the Public Trust in Intertidal Land Act takes a comprehensive easement for recreation without limitation. The absence of any compensation to the fee owners renders the Act unconstitutional.