Opinion ID: 2321422
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Common Law Approach

Text: [¶ 68] In Bell II, we acknowledged, consistent with our long-standing approach to the common law development of the public's rights in the intertidal zone, that the terms fishing, fowling, and navigation have been and should be given a sympathetically generous and broad interpretation. See Bell II, 557 A.2d at 173. As the concurrence acknowledges, we have expanded other aspects of the public's rights in intertidal lands based on the three enumerated public uses so as to account for evolving social and commercial circumstances. Although the plain language of the Ordinance grants free fishing to Everie Inhabitant who is an hous-holder, The Book of the General Lauues and Libertyes Concerning the Inhabitants of the Massachusets (1648), reprinted in The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts 35 (1929), that right, which we early-on described with reference to householder[s], was later regarded as a right of the public. See Parker v. Cutler Milldam Co., 20 Me. 353, 357-58 (1841); Duncan v. Sylvester, 24 Me. 482, 486 (1844); Marshall, 93 Me. at 536-37, 45 A. at 498 (the public may enjoy all these rights [including fishing] in common with the owner [of intertidal land]); Andrews, 124 Me. at 363, 129 A. at 299. We have also eliminated the effect of the language of the Colonial Ordinance that restricts free fishing to within the precincts of the town where [the householders] dwell. See Leavitt, 105 Me. at 80, 81-82, 72 A. at 877-78 (quotation marks omitted) (upholding legislation that excepted inhabitants of a town from restrictions on clamming, but noting that where towns did not issue permits, there is free fishing for every one). Additionally, we have broadly interpreted the right expressed in the Colonial Ordinance of passage of boats or other vessels ... to other men's houses and lands to include the right to moor vessels on intertidal lands and discharge and take on cargo or ferry passengers. See Deering, 25 Me. at 64-65 (quotation marks omitted); Andrews, 124 Me. at 364, 129 A. at 299. We have also made clear that the right of navigation extends to commercial and recreational uses. See Andrews, 124 Me. at 364, 129 A. at 299. [¶ 69] A sympathetically generous and broad interpretation of the public's rights is not, however, without limits. See McFadden v. Haynes & DeWitt Ice Co., 86 Me. 319, 325, 29 A. 1068, 1069 (1894) (stating that the public right of fishing does not include cutting ice in intertidal areas); Moore v. Griffin, 22 Me. 350, 356 (1843) (holding that the public right of fishing does not include the taking of mussel-bed manure from the intertidal land of another). In Bell II, we followed two Massachusetts cases that held that the public's right to use intertidal land does not include bathing. 557 A.2d at 175 (citing as persuasive precedent, Butler v. Attorney General, 195 Mass. 79, 80 N.E. 688 (1907), and Michaelson v. Silver Beach Improvement Ass'n, Inc., 342 Mass. 251, 173 N.E.2d 273 (1961)). [¶ 70] Since our earliest decisions concerning ownership and use of intertidal lands, we have adhered to our common law approach centered on the three enumerated public uses. See, e.g., Bell II, 557 A.2d at 171, 173; accord id. at 183 (Wathen, J., dissenting); Bell I, 510 A.2d at 513-15; Lapish v. Bangor Bank, 8 Me. 85, 93 (1831). That approach has not prevented us from accounting for the ever-changing circumstances of society when applying the principles of the Colonial Ordinance. See Barrows, 73 Me. at 448-50; Woodman v. Pitman, 79 Me. 456, 460-63, 10 A. 321, 323-25 (1887) (recognizing the emergence of the ice harvesting industry and the declining need for travel on frozen navigable waterways). We do not rigidly apply ancient common law principles without considering the changed realities of modern times. This approach was described eloquently in Woodman: The inexhaustible and ever-changing complications in human affairs are constantly presenting new questions and new conditions which the law must provide for as they arise; and the law has expansive and adaptive force enough to respond to the demands thus made of it; not by subverting, but by forming new combinations and making new applications out of, its already established principles,the result produced being only the new corn that cometh out of the old fields. 79 Me. at 458, 10 A. at 322. The common law requires courts to account for the ever varying circumstances of new cases presented and ... the newly developed industries of the age [while not] setting aside its plain doctrines because they are not in accord with our own views of what it should be. Barrows, 73 Me. at 449-50; see also In re Robinson, 88 Me. 17, 23, 33 A. 652, 654 (1895) (The common law would ill deserve its familiar panegyric as the `perfection of human reason,' if it did not expand with the progress of society and develop with new ideas of right and justice.). [¶ 71] In short, we should apply, as have the generations of Maine jurists that have preceded us, a sympathetically generous and broad interpretive approach when construing the uses arising from the public trust rights in Maine's intertidal lands, but we should do so without deviating from the core requirement that the uses are delimited by the terms fishing, fowling, and navigation as these terms have and will continue to evolve.