Opinion ID: 829412
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: rights of abutting landowners

Text: The owner of property abutting upon a street “sustains a threefold relation to the street”:
2. As owner of the reversionary interest to the center of the street. 3. As owner of a lot, possessed of the right of ingress and egress to and from the street. [Detroit City R Co v Mills, 85 Mich 634, 653; 48 NW 1007 (1891) (opinion by GRANT, J.).] First, the abutting landowner “has the right, in common with every other member of the public, to the use of the street.” Id. As Mills stated in this respect, “[f]ree passage is all the law gives him.” Id. “A highway is a public passage for all,” Beaubien, 2 Doug at 285, and thus every person-- including the abutting landowner-- is entitled to use public ways for travel. However, in addition to right of public travel, other public uses may be implied from the dedication of land as a public way. For instance, in Mills, this Court considered whether the city of Detroit could authorize the construction of a new system of electric street cars on a city street. A plurality concluded that this use was implied by the dedication and did not impose a new burden on the abutting landowners. Id. at 654. “It may now be considered the well-settled rule that the streets of a city may be used for any purpose which is a necessary public one, and the abutting owner will not be entitled to a new compensation, in the absence of a statute giving it.” Id. This “extension of the public rights in the streets” includes uses necessitated by “increased needs for heating, 16 lighting, draining, sewerage, water, etc. . . . .” Id. at 653. The rationale for this rule is that [t]he dedication of land . . . must be understood as made and accepted with the expectation that it may be required for other public purposes than those of passage and travel merely, and that under the direction and control of the public authorities it is subject to be appropriated to all the uses to which village and city streets are usually devoted, as the wants or convenience of the people may render necessary or important[.] [Warren v Grand Haven, 30 Mich 24, 28 (1874) (holding that the municipality had the right to construct sewer lines beneath land dedicated for a public road).] As this makes plain, the extension of public rights in the streets set forth in Mills has not been thought to be contrary in any way to the central principle of dedication, i.e., that the use of land dedicated to the public depends on the dedicator’s intention and may not be appropriated to an entirely different use. See White’s Lessee, 31 US at 438; Weihe, 198 Mich at 341. Rather, the rule in Mills is grounded on the premise that, in dedicating a street, the dedicator’s intention was to appropriate the land to all uses to which public streets are usually devoted, including all uses incidental to public travel. Mills respects the municipality’s “exclusive control” over a roadway in accordance with the use to which it was dedicated. In re O’Brien, 119 Mich 540, 541; 79 NW 1070 (1899). However, this Court’s precedent also recognizes that “if a dedication is made for a specific or defined purpose, neither the legislature, a municipality or its successor, nor the general public has any power to use the property for any other purpose than the one designated, whether such use be public or private, and whether the dedication is a common-law or a statutory dedication[.]” [Baldwin Manor, Inc v City of Birmingham, 341 Mich 423, 430-431; 67 NW2d 812 (1954) (citation omitted).] 17 Following this fundamental proposition, this Court held in Baldwin Manor that the city was prohibited from putting a road across land dedicated for use as a park because that use was inconsistent with the purpose of the dedication. Id. at 434. Similarly, in Village of Kalkaska v Shell Oil Co (After Remand), 433 Mich 348, 358; 446 NW2d 91 (1989), we held that the village’s property interest in streets dedicated under the 1887 plat act did not include mineral rights because those rights were not necessary to the use and purpose for which the street was dedicated. Our caselaw is clear that a public entity’s use of land dedicated to the public is limited to the purpose of the dedication. And in the case of a public road, “[w]hether the fee is nominally in county, city, or private owners, the public control is only in trust to secure to the public those rights of a public nature that exist in public ways of that kind.” Detroit v Detroit City R Co, 76 Mich 421, 425; 43 NW 447 (1889). Second, the abutting landowner possesses a reversionary interest to the center of the street. “It is elementary that upon the vacation of a street or alley the land reverts to the abutting owner or owners.” Mich Central R Co v Miller, 172 Mich 201, 208; 137 NW 555 (1912). This rule applies to common-law and statutory dedications alike. As we have explained: “We see no reason to distinguish between the two types of dedication for the purposes of the law of abandonment. It is clear that the need for certainty of title exists equally in both instances.” Clark, 334 Mich at 657. In a commonlaw dedication, unencumbered title to the property is restored in the abutting landowners when the street becomes free of the public easement. See 12 Michigan Civil Jurisprudence, Highways & Streets, § 224, p 260 (“Upon a vacation or abandonment of the street by the public, the fee of the abutting owners becomes free of the easement, 18 which is thereby extinguished and terminated.”). In a statutory dedication, title “vest[s] in the rightful proprietors of the lots, within the subdivision covered by the plat, abutting the street or alley.” MCL 560.227a(1).11 And while there are statutorily defined mechanisms by which a road may be abandoned,12 as well as particular procedures applicable to roads adjacent to a lake,13 by either mode of dedication, and without regard to the road’s location, title to a street that is vacated or abandoned vests in the owners of the lots abutting the street. MCL 560.227a(1); Clark, 334 Mich at 657. 11 MCL 560.227a(1), governing the vesting of title upon vacation of plat, street, or alley, provides: Title to any part of the plat vacated by the court’s judgment, other than a street or alley, shall vest in the rightful proprietor of that part. Title to a street or alley the full width of which is vacated by the court’s judgment shall vest in the rightful proprietors of the lots, within the subdivision covered by the plat, abutting the street or alley. Title to a public highway or portion of a public highway that borders on, is adjacent to, or ends at a lake or the general course of a stream may vest in the state subject to [MCL 560.226]. MCL 560.226(2) specifies particular rules for discontinuing highways adjacent to a lake or stream, specifically requiring the circuit court to determine if vacating the plat “would result in a loss of public access,” and, if so, to “allow the state and, if the subdivision is located in a township, the township to decide whether it wants to maintain the property as an ingress and egress point.” Accordingly, before a road commission abandons a road bordering a lake or stream, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment and the township in which the road is located may elect to maintain the road. If the township and the department decline to exercise their “priority to obtain the property or control of the property as an ingress and egress point,” the property reverts to the abutting landowners. MCL 560.226(2); MCL 560.227a(1); see also MCL 224.18(5) and (8). 12 Abandonment of a highway is subject to extensive statutory procedures and must be approved by the circuit court in the county where the road is located. See MCL 224.18; MCL 560.222; MCL 560.223; MCL 560.224a. 13 See MCL 560.226, MCL 247.41, and n 11 of this opinion. 19 This rule appears beyond reproach. In considering a predecessor of the current vacation statute, this Court explained in Loud, 241 Mich at 455, that “[t]he vacation statute . . . reveals legislative recognition of the propriety and justice of the rule that gives the owner of a lot bordering on a street or alley, opened or unopened, title to the center.” See also Patrick, 120 Mich at 198, stating that the “plainest principles of justice require that the original holder’s claim should be recognized.” Indeed, in In re Albers’ Petition, 113 Mich 640; 71 NW 1110 (1897), we held that the power of the courts to vacate a city street upon petition of the abutting land owners is not necessarily subject to the acquiescence of the city authorities. Albers, 113 Mich at 641, stated: Our understanding is that the city has no proprietary interest in the land, all of its authority over it growing out of its legal duty to maintain the public ways, which are placed in its charge. Such interest in the land is in the abutting proprietors ordinarily . . . . [Citation omitted.] Third, the abutting landowner’s relationship to the street includes a right of access to his or her own property. This right is considered a natural easement and one of the incidents of ownership or occupancy of land. See Kirchen, 291 Mich at 108, in which we stated: The purchasers of lots in the original plat took not only the interest of the grantor in the land described in their respective deeds, but, as an incorporeal hereditament appurtenant to it, took an easement in the streets, parks and public grounds mentioned and designated in the plat as an implied covenant that subsequent purchasers should be entitled to the same rights. [Citation omitted.] This “right of access” is considered a “private right” that flows from a deed that refers to a plat, and is distinct from the public’s rights in the road. See id. (explaining that “‘[t]he lot owners have a peculiar interest in the street which neither the local nor general public 20 can pretend to claim; a private right in the nature of an incorporeal hereditament’”) (citation omitted). And it is well settled that this right of access constitutes a property right that adds value to the land. See State Hwy Comm v Sandberg, 383 Mich 144, 149; 174 NW2d 761 (1970) (“That right of access ordinarily attaches to property abutting a public highway and that this constitutes a property right is not disputed . . . and must be accepted as long having been the law in Michigan.”); Kirchen, 291 Mich at 108 (“The grantors could not recall this easement and covenant any more than they could recall other parts of the consideration. They added materially to the value of every lot purchased.”). In summary, our caselaw has long recognized a landowner’s multi-faceted relationship to a public street abutting his property. This Court’s decision in Mills not only provides insight into the nature of these rights, but also the extent to which Michigan courts have traditionally protected them. Mills appears to have been a difficult decision for the Court. The case was argued twice; the lead opinion was signed by only two