Opinion ID: 2289766
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: State Ownership of Submerged Land

Text: There is no question but that the waters of Isle of Wight Bay and the land under them are the property of the State. Kerpelman v. Board of Public Works, supra ; Brown v. Kennedy, 5 H. & J. 195 (1821). Navigable water and the land thereunder have always been a part of the public domain. There is a distinction, however, in the type of ownership of the two. Since the Magna Charta granted by King John to the Barons at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, the public has had an interest in the navigable stream such as the rights of fishery and navigation, which cannot be abridged or restrained by charter or grant. Bruce v. Director, Dept. of Chesapeake Bay Affairs, 261 Md. 585, 276 A.2d 200 (1971). No exclusive use of the water may be granted; however, the property in submerged land can be transferred by grant. It was owned by the King of England and he had the right to dispose of it, which he did by the fourth section of the charter to Lord Baltimore. Brown v. Kennedy, supra. See also Martin v. Waddell, 41 U.S. 367 (1842). After the Revolution all lands which had belonged to the Lord Proprietary became absolutely vested in the State and were held for the public benefit;    [N]ot, however, as under the government of the province, as the estate and for the private emolument of an individual, but for the use of the public   . Baltimore v. McKim, 3 Bland, 453, 460 (1831). It is well established that the title of land below the high water mark, as well as rivers or streams within the ebb and flow of the tide, belong to the public. Day v. Day, 222 Md. 530, 537 (1865); Causey v. Gray, supra, at 387; and West. Md. T.R. Co. v. Baltimore, supra, at 567. For some 200 years, until 1862, the State (and the Proprietor) patented to individuals, subject to the public rights to navigation and fishery, fee simple title to lands under navigable waters. Bowie v. Western Md. R.R. Ter. Co., 133 Md. 1, 7, 104 A. 461 (1918). The reported cases in this Court show instances of such patents as early as 1663 ( Casey v. Inloes, 1 Gill 430) and as late as 1861 ( Linthicum v. Coan, 64 Md. 439). However, it would appear that this Court has at times had a second thought concerning the issuing of such patents, as was pointed out in the opinion of this Court written by Judge Smith in Van Ruymbeke v. Patapsco Industrial Park, 261 Md. 470, 276 A.2d 61 (1971): There is authority in Maryland for the rejection of an under-water patent. In Day v. Day, 22 Md. 530 (1865), there was an application for a patent prior to 1862. The land was underwater. Before the passage of the Act of 1862 the Commissioner of the Land Office granted the patent, overruling the caveat. The appeal reached our predecessors after the passage of the 1862 Act. The Court said: `   Rivers or streams within the ebb and flow of tide, to high water mark, belong to the public, and in that sense are navigable waters; all the land below high water mark, being as much a part of the jus publicum, as the stream itself. The owners of adjacent ground had no exclusive right to such lands, nor could any exclusive right to their use be acquired, otherwise than by an express grant from the State. The Act of 1862 was intended to vest these owners of contiguous lands with rights and privileges not recognized by the Common Law, and to that end, the 1st section declares,  that the proprietor of land bounding on any of the navigable waters of the State, should be entitled to all accretions thereto by the recession of water, whether before thereafter formed or made, by natural causes or thereafter formed or made, by natural causes or otherwise.' Id. at 537. The Court went on to hold that the patent should not issue. In Patterson v. Gelston, 23 Md. 432 (1865), after first citing Day, the Court said: `Upon the principles decided by the late chancellor, in Chapman v. Hoskins, 2 Md. Ch. 485 [(1851)], to which we give our entire approbation, no patent ought to be granted for land so situated, even though the power of the State to grant such patent might be unquestionable, and the Act of 1861-1862 had not been passed.' Id. at 448. 261 Md. 476-477. Related to the proposition that the ownership of land under navigable waters was originally vested in the sovereign is the collateral question of whether the right which the riparian owner has to fill or wharf out is a property right or a license. As Professor Power has pointed out in his work, Chesapeake Bay In Legal Perspective, the status accorded riparian rights as an incident to the ownership of contiguous land creates the strong implication that it is a property right rather than a license. However, our reading of the Maryland cases would indicate that there have certainly been occasions when this Court has taken an ambivalent approach to this issue and while terming the right a property right has viewed it as a quasi-property right, a license or a franchise which exists at the grace of our Legislature. In B. & O.R.R. v. Chase, supra , this Court identified riparian rights as a property right but one that was subject to modification and change by the Legislature, stating: These riparian rights, founded on the common law, are property, and are valuable, and while they must be enjoyed in due subjection to the rights of the public, they cannot be arbitrarily or capriciously destroyed or impaired. They are rights of which, when once vested, the owner can only be deprived in accordance with the law of the land, and, if necessary that they be taken for public use, upon due compensation. Yates v. Milwaukee, 10 Wall. 504. It is in view of these principles that the present action is sought to be maintained. But these principles of the common law, governing the rights of the riparian owner, however well established, are subject to change and modification by the statute law of the State, and by the nature and circumstances of the grant by which the title may have been acquired to the land bounding on the river. 43 Md. at 35-36. (Emphasis supplied.) Again in Baltimore v. Canton Co., supra , the Court stated:    We shall assume, without deciding, that Section 48 [Act of 1862] could be repealed, and also Section 47 to the extent that improvements had not actually been made. [Indeed, the Wetlands Act of 1970 does just that.] Under the Act of 1745  or 1862  `the riparian owner had no vested title to the land covered by water immediately in front of his property, nor to the improvements built out of the water, until the improvements had been actually completed   . The required consent of the city agencies was given by the establishment of limiting lines. The power to establish such a line includes power to change it. The right to build piers to a particular pierhead line, conferred by an ordinance of 1880, `was a privilege subject to revocation at any time before it was acted upon, and the ordinance of 1881, which repealed all ordinances inconsistent therewith [and established a new line], was a revocation of this privilege.' Classen v. Chesapeake Guano Co., 81 Md. 258, 267, 31 A. 808, 809; Cahill v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, supra, 173 Md. 456, 457, 196 A. 305. Subject to such governmental regulation by the city (and by the federal government), the riparian owner's right to make improvements in the water was `a franchise; a vested right peculiar in its nature; a quasi property, of which [he] could not lawfully be deprived, without [his] consent.' 186 Md. at 625-626. Indeed, it would appear that a valid distinction may be drawn between used and unused riparian rights and    it appears that the constitutional protection given judge-made riparian rights may extend only to such rights as the riparian actually exercises before the Legislature decides to make changes or modification. Chesapeake Bay In Legal Perspective, supra, at 148. It is against this background that we come to the consideration of the legal effects of the 1970 Wetlands Act and §§ 15A and 15B of the Public Local Laws of Worcester County, which established the Worcester County Shoreline Commission, on the rights of the riparian owner, Larmar.