Opinion ID: 170799
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The 4,481 Stipulation and the Judgment in Favor of the Clingers

Text: After the district court adopted the approach of the Provo City cases, the United States assigned to Utah any interest that it possessed in land between the bed of the Utah Lake and the private defendants' property, but it excluded from this assignment the land in the Powell Slough. Then, in July 2002, Utah entered into a stipulation with the private landowners, including the Clingers. It provided a guideline for determining to what extent the private landowners had used the disputed land, stating that: [t]he Defendants, and each of them, their heirs and assigns, and Plaintiff the State of Utah, stipulate that from the time of the original federal patent under which their predecessors-in-interest claim title, they and their predecessors-in-interest have used that land lakeward from the federally surveyed meander line to an elevation no higher than 4481 feet above sea level continuously, except as such times as water levels have interfered with their historic use. The Defendants need put on no further evidence to support their claim of use of the land between the meander [line] and 4481 feet above sea level to support a finding by the court that at all relevant times the ordinary high water mark on Utah Lake was no higher than 4481 feet above sea level. Aplt's App. vol. II, at 665. Relying on this 4,481 Stipulation, Utah and the Clingers filed a joint motion to quiet title in the Clingers and to settle the boundary dispute. On November 20, 2002, the district court granted the parties' request and entered a judgment stating that title to the property described ... is quieted in the [Clingers] and to the property lakeward to an elevation of 4,481 MSL against all claims that the State has in its sovereign capacity or could bring as against this Defendant at this time. Aplt's App. vol. II, at 675-76.