Opinion ID: 3132350
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Statutory Condemnation

Text: ¶ 19. We first consider whether plaintiffs have proven that Petty Road was properly laid out as a public highway through statutory condemnation. The law in effect when the eastern segment of Petty Road was laid out provided three legal requirements for the creation of a road: (1) an official survey to be recorded in the town clerk’s office; (2) a formal act by the selectboard; and (3) a certificate of opening.8 Austin v. Town of Middlesex, 2009 VT 102, ¶ 8, 186 Vt. 629, 987 A.2d 307 (mem.) (citing Laws of Vermont, 1824). We have long held that these statutory requirements “must be substantially complied with or the proceedings will be void.” Id. ¶ 7 (quoting In re Mattison, 120 Vt. 459, 462, 144 A.2d 778, 780 (1958)); see also Town of Barton v. Town of Sutton, 93 Vt. 102, 103, 106 A. 583, 584 (1919) (“The procedure to 8 The requirement of a certificate of opening was added in 1820. See Kelly v. Town of Barnard, 155 Vt. 296, 302, 583 A.2d 614, 618 (1990). In this case, the trial court found that it was likely that the western segment of Petty Road was laid out sometime prior to the laying out of the eastern segment, which occurred in 1821. In the absence of a recorded certificate of opening, we presume that this requirement was not in effect when the road was laid out. Id. at 303, 583 A.2d at 618. As a result, we have not considered this third requirement in our analysis of this case. 9 be followed in laying out or discontinuing a highway is wholly statutory and the method prescribed must be substantially complied with or the proceedings will be void.”). ¶ 20. In a related context, we have acknowledged that “the difficulty in determining whether abandoned roads still legally exist stems from inconsistent, and sometimes incomprehensible, town records dating back two centuries or more,” Wellford, 2009 VT 100, ¶ 8 (quoting McAdams v. Town of Barnard, 2007 VT 61, ¶ 13, 182 Vt. 259, 936 A.2d 1310), but, as discussed in detail below, we consistently have required proof of such records when considering whether the town undertook the proper statutory formalities in laying out a road. See, e.g., Austin, 2009 VT 102, ¶ 9 (finding no public highway where there was no official act of selectboard in laying out highway); Kelly, 155 Vt. at 303-04, 583 A.2d at 618-19 (1990) (finding public highway because, even though no certificate of opening was found, road was surveyed and recorded and thus likely opened prior to passage of statute requiring certificate); Bacon v. Boston & Me. R.R., 83 Vt. 421, 432-34, 76 A. 128, 133-34 (1910) (finding no public highway where there was no certificate of completion). ¶ 21. It is undisputed that the recorded action of the selectboard established only the eastern segment of Petty Road as a public road. With respect to the western segment, there is no recorded survey covering that segment, no recorded act of the selectboard establishing that section as a public road, and no certificate of opening of that segment. ¶ 22. The trial court relied, to a greater or lesser degree, on three rationales to find that the western segment of Petty Road is a public highway despite the absence of all the statutory elements: (1) it found circumstantial evidence that the western segment had been laid out as a public road, primarily through deed references and public use of that segment, and found that the “[record] proof quite conceivably has been lost as a result of the passage of time[,] . . . hav[ing] been omitted from the records due to error at the outset, or on account of later misfiling, or because they were lost or misappropriated”; (2) it concluded that both segments of Petty Road 10 had been discontinued as a public highway in 1842 and reinstated in 1843 and that the act of reinstatement met the statutory requirements; and (3) the selectboard could extend the termination point of the public highway pursuant to 19 V.S.A. § 32. None of these rationales supports the trial court’s ultimate conclusion that the western segment of Petty Road is a public highway. ¶ 23. We start with the trial court’s conclusion that it could rely on circumstantial evidence to find that the selectboard properly laid out the western segment of Petty Road as a public highway. In evaluating this argument, it is important to understand that there was no circumstantial evidence that the records showing compliance with the statutory elements ever existed or any evidence explaining why they were not found in the town office. The court’s discussion of the possible reasons for their absence was speculative. The court concluded that “quite conceivably” the records were lost because of the passage of time, noting various explanations for their absence. In its findings, the court found “it likely . . . that the records of such official action were either never filed, misplaced or lost.” There was no evidence, however, that any of these alternatives occurred or that the records existed in the first instance. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the records, if they existed, complied with the statutory requirements. ¶ 24. Before evaluating this issue, we note a distinction between two types of circumstantial evidence that are often relied upon in statutory condemnation cases: circumstantial evidence showing that records of official action once existed and properly were recorded, and circumstantial evidence that a road was open to the public. All the evidence plaintiffs presented in this case, and all the evidence relied upon by the trial court, was of the latter type—evidence that the public used the western segment of Petty Road. ¶ 25. While we recognize our limited case law on the question, the decisions that exist directly conflict with the trial court’s rationale. Our primary case, Barber v. Vinton, 82 Vt. 327, 11 73 A. 881 (1909), involves another statutory requirement—that of notice to the landowner over whose property the road will pass—but the holding applies broadly to all statutory condemnation elements. In Barber, the plaintiff alleged that the official record of the selectboard in laying out the road failed to show that she, as an affected landowner, received notice of the proceeding as required by statute. The selectboard relied upon a presumption of regularity of its actions, along with parol evidence that the plaintiff received notice and appeared at the hearing. We held that notice of a hearing on the necessity of laying out a road could not be presumed. But it is our other holding in Barber, on the use of parol evidence, that is important to this case. ¶ 26. In discussing parol evidence, we first laid out the statutory requirements, stating: The statute provides that the selectmen shall return the original petition, with a report of their doings thereon and of the manner of notifying the parties, with the survey of the road, to the town clerk’s office, to be kept on file therein, and that their order laying out the road, and the survey, shall be recorded. Id. at 333, 73 A. at 883. We then addressed the plaintiff’s argument that the statute “was intended to provide for an official ascertainment and preservation of all the facts essential to the validity of the proceedings and the determination of the rights of those concerned, and that the enactment will fail of its purpose if it be held that defects may be supplied by parol evidence.” Id. Relying upon a tax case that reached a holding similar to the plaintiff’s argument, we agreed with the plaintiff and held that compliance with the statutory elements cannot be proved by parol evidence. Id. ¶ 27. We reached a similar result in another context in Bacon v. Boston & Maine Railroad. In that case, the plaintiffs failed to prove a record of the opening of a highway, the third necessary element as set out above. As in Barber, we addressed first the argument that there is a presumption of regularity in the action of the selectboard and that the presumption satisfies the plaintiffs’ requirement to prove the third element of the statute. We rejected that argument, relying on the same tax case discussed in Barber, and held that “the rule cannot be so 12 construed as to permit the presumption here claimed, so construed as to alter the rule that the existence and contents of a record must be proved by the record, unless something is shown which prevents or excuses the production of the record.” Id. at 435, 76 A. at 134 (citing Sherwin v. Bugbee, 17 Vt. 337, 340 (1845)). We reasoned that “the burden of showing that the crossing is a public highway was on the appellants under their petitions . . . and, if they relied on the record of the certificate in support of their contention, it was for them to show it.” Id. at 433, 76 A. at 134. We explained that the official record “was the best evidence upon this point” and that without evidence of destruction or some other inaccessibility, it should have been produced. Id. ¶ 28. Looking at Barber and Bacon together, we conclude that parol evidence may be admissible in the form of an actual action of the selectboard or surveyor if the proponent of the public nature of the road can show that the record of the action once existed but is no longer available. We do not believe that, under these cases, a court can find that a road is public unless the statutorily required records are shown to have existed. In this case, there is no evidence that such records existed. ¶ 29. We emphasize that our holding here is consistent with our decision in Austin v. Town of Middlesex, which we cited above, supra, ¶ 19, for our holding that there must be substantial compliance with the statutory requirements in effect at the time the road is laid out or the proceedings will be void. Austin, 2009 VT 102, ¶ 7. The trial court here might have been able to infer from the evidence before it that the selectboard took steps to lay out the western segment of Petty Road as a public way, but it had no basis to determine whether the selectboard substantially complied with the statutes in doing so. We have a long line of cases that consider a selectboard’s compliance with the statutory requirements in laying out and opening a public highway. Many of these decisions find no statutory compliance, and Austin is one such example. We enforce Austin and its progeny by holding that statutory compliance cannot be 13 proved unless the proponent introduces the necessary records as filed in the town office or proves that the records once existed and complied with the statute. ¶ 30. This leads us to the trial court’s second rationale, that the discontinuance of Petty Road in 1842, followed a few months later by its reestablishment, proved that it was properly laid out over its entire length. This rationale actually has two parts: (1) the discontinuance of the entire length of Petty Road, including both segments, demonstrates that the selectboard must have laid out the western segment of Petty Road sometime prior to its discontinuance, and (2) the reestablishment complies with the statutory requirement of a recorded survey. As we explain below, we cannot agree with either part of the rationale.9 ¶ 31. The first part of the rationale—that the discontinuance of the entire length of Petty Road demonstrates that it had been laid out as a public highway in the first instance—is inconsistent with our holding above on the use of circumstantial evidence. We explicitly addressed this issue in Bacon in response to this very same argument made by the plaintiffs there. In Bacon, we gave “no force” to the argument that the official act of the selectboard in discontinuing the disputed highway in 1908 was evidence that the road had been laid out properly in 1863, stating that “since there was no public highway to discontinue, this ostensible discontinuance had no force as a recognition of the highway.” 83 Vt. at 436, 76 A. at 135. ¶ 32. The second part of the rationale addresses the statutory requirement that there be a recorded survey of the road. The language in the 1843 record of Petty Road’s reestablishment clearly states that the selectboard is laying out the road. It does not, however, address the requirement of a recorded survey. In fact, it states that the road was reestablished “along a survey of the old road discontinued on the 16th of November last.” Plaintiffs presented to the trial court evidence of only one survey, and this survey included only the eastern segment of 9 Because of our disposition, we need not address defendants’ argument that the trial court erred in finding that present-day Gowing Road, which marks the western terminus of Petty Road, is the Mason Road referred to in the historical documents. 14 Petty Road. No new survey accompanied the reestablishment of the road. The court noted that a preexisting survey could be referenced to comply with the statute, see Winooski Lumber & Water Power. Co. v. Town of Colchester, 57 Vt. 538, 541, 1885 WL 4983, at  (noting that statutory requirement to record survey when laying out highway may be complied with “by reference to and adoption of a recorded survey”), overruled on other grounds by Demers v. City of Montpelier, 120 Vt. 380, 386 141 A.2d 676. 680 (1958), but there was no actual survey to reference. We cannot use incorporation by reference to infer the existence of a survey when that survey is in doubt. See Hall v. City of Manchester, 39 N.H. 295, 1859 WL 3798, at  (discussing usefulness of incorporating by reference description of street when such description aids in determining boundaries of street otherwise properly laid out). ¶ 33. The trial court also addressed the absence of a survey covering the western segment of Petty Road in its third rationale, that the requirements for laying out and opening a new road do not apply because the selectboard was extending an existing road, not creating a new one. To show that the selectboard could extend an existing road, the trial court relied on 19