Court Opinion

ID: 9812751
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:47:06.564345+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:26:22.102470
License: Public Domain

SANDSTROM, Justice,
concurring in the result.
[¶ 17] North Dakota statute N.D.C.C. § 47-06-05 plainly says:
Where from natural causes land forms by imperceptible degrees upon the bank of a river or stream, navigable or not navigable, either by accumulation of material or by the recession of the stream, such land belongs to the owner of the bank, subject to any existing right of way over the bank.
The majority opinion essentially says the statute is similar to the common law so we will analyze the case as if there were no statute. But in North Dakota there is no common law where the law is declared by statute. N.D.C.C. § 1-01-06 (“In this state there is no common law in any case in which the law is declared by the code.”).
[¶ 18] If there were no North Dakota statute, the lengthy but irrelevant citations in ¶ 9 to cases from other jurisdictions might sound compelling, but on review, the cases themselves turn out not to be. Even the case Maunalua Bay Beach Ohana 28 v. State, 122 Hawaul 34, 222 P.3d 441, 444 (App.2009), cited for the lead-off proposition about what “appears well settled,” is not the holding and is included in a survey of law with introductory language about what “[s]ome scholars have expressed.”
[¶ 19] This Court’s opinions, Perry v. Erling, 132 N.W.2d 889, 902 (N.D.1965), and Greeman v. Smith, 138 N.W.2d 433 (N.D.1965), however, appear to have resolved the question here with the answer arrived at by the majority, limiting the statute’s application to property borders defined by the body of water. Although this interpretation adds words not in the statute, the opinions have stood for half a century without judicial or legislative correction. That being the case, I believe the doctrines of stare decisis and legislative acquiescence apply, and the interpretation persists.
[¶ 20] I concur in the result.
[¶ 21] GERALD W. VANDE WALLE, C.J., concurs.