Court Opinion

ID: 9632079
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:02:27.722049+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:08.205737
License: Public Domain

LUSK, J.,
specially concurring.
I agree with the court’s conclusion that the case is ruled by Bowlby v. Shively, 22 Or 410, 30 P 154.
The question of the respective rights of the upland owner and the state’s lessee of the tidelands is, as the opinion of the court points out, a question of Oregon law. That law was long since established by legislation① and the opinion of this court in Bowlby v. Shively, and opinions, to the contrary expressed by courts elsewhere or by textwriters, no matter how re*645spected, are irrelevant in the present context. The principles announced in the Bowlby case, indeed, had been stated in prior decisions and, as Mr. Justice Lord said in the Bowlby case: “[T]he previous adjudications of this court * * * have become a rule of property.” 22 Or at 427.
The Bowlby case holds that the state is the absolute owner of the tidelands with a consequent right to dispose of such title in such manner as it may deem proper, subject only to the paramount rights of navigation and commerce; that the right to build a wharf over the tideland is appurtenant to it and not to the adjacent land; and hence in a controversy between the upland owner and the state’s lessee of the tideland involving such a right the lessee should prevail.
I think it should be emphasized that we are dealing with a rule of property and that Bowlby, as Justice Lord said of our prior adjudged cases, “should be regarded as settled law, which could not be disregarded without disturbing titles and bringing disaster perhaps upon those who had accepted and acted upon those decisions as the law of this state.” 22 Or at 422. So, again, the court said at page 427:
“From these considerations it results, if we are to be bound by the previous adjudications of this court, which have become a rule of property, and upon the faith of which important rights and titles have become vested, and large expenditures have been made and incurred, that the defendants [the upland owners] have no rights or interests in the lands in question.
“Upon this point there is no diversity of judgment among us.”
'• Bowlby was decided in 1892. Twenty years later Mr. Justice Burnett, speaking for the court in Cor*646vallis & Eastern R. Co. v. Benson, 61 Or 359, 370, 121 P 418, said: “The controlling precedent in this State —the landmark to which all subsequent decisions of this court on this subject are referable — is the masterly opinion of Justice Lord, in Bowlby v. Shively * *' He then quoted from the Bowlby opinion as follows:
“* * * ‘"When the State of Oregon was admitted into the Union, the tidelands became its property, and subject to its jurisdiction and disposal; that, in the absence of legislation or usage, the common-law rule would govern the rights of the upland proprietor, and by that law the title to them is in the State; that the State has the right to dispose of them in such manner as she might deem proper, as is frequently done in various ways, and whereby sometimes large areas are reclaimed and occupied by cities, and are put to public and private uses; state control and ownership therein being supreme, subject only to the paramount right of navigation and commerce. The whole question is for the State to determine for itself. It can say to what extent it will preserve its rights of ownership in them or confer them on others. Our State has done that by the legislation already referred to, and our courts have declared its absolute property in and dominion over the tidelands and its right to dispose of its title in such manner as it might deem best, unaffected by any “legal obligation to recognize the rights of either the riparian owners or those who had occupied such tidelands,” other than it chose to resign to them, subject only to the paramount right of navigation and the uses of commerce.’ * “ *”
Justice Burnett continued:
“* * * The principles announced in that case have never been disturbed by any decision of this court, and they are yet to be challenged by any ruling of the federal courts. They are part of the jurisprudence of the State, and have become a *647settled rule of property. They constitute the foundation of many holdings, both great and small, and to overturn them now, if, indeed, they ever could háve been disturbed, would be to invoke confusion where certainty ought to be thoroughly established.” 61 Or at 371.
Since 1912 nothing has occurred — either by way of act of the Legislature or decision of this court — to disturb these principles. To my mind they establish a rule of property as firmly as anything in the law can be established. Their application makes imperative the decision of this court that the upland owner has no rights in the tidelands here in question except the right accorded by the Legislature to acquire an interest in the tidelands by meeting the bid of the highest bidder.
' I also agree that the State Land Board could not, conformably to the principle that public bidding must be open to fair competition, accept the conditional bid of tiie plaintiffs, though I have no doubt that the Board has the authority to include such a condition in its advertisement for bids, and, had it done so, that the procedure would not for that reason have been assailable. The insurmountable difficulty, as I view it, lies in the fact that it was not the Board, but the plaintiffs which imposed the condition. The defendant was given no notice and could not properly be charged with notice that the attachment of a condition to a bid, substantially varying the term of the proposal, would be acceptable.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice McAllister concurs in this opinion.

 Laws 1872, 129; id. 1874, 77; id. 1876, 70. These statutes gave the upland owners a preference in the provisions for the sale of such lands, though the state was under no obligation to recognize any 'rights in the upland owners, Bowlby v. Shively, supra, 22 Or at 416; Lewis v. City of Portland, 25 Or 133, 161-162, 35 P 256, 42 Am St Rep 772, 22 LRA 736.