Court Opinion

ID: 9587953
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:28:17.5225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:26.655709
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING
The Court having granted a Petition for Rehearing in the above entitled matter and having heard oral argument, Justices Donaldson, Shepard and Bakes adhere to the views expressed in their prior opinions filed in the original hearing in the above entitled matter. Justice Huntley, who sat in place of former Justice Joseph J. McFadden who retired prior to the rehearing, concurs with the opinion authored by Justice Bakes.
The prior opinion of Justice Bistline is supplemented and modified by the following additional opinion.
BISTLINE, Justice,
on Petition for Rehearing.
The plurality opinion authored by Justice Bakes remains unchanged, other than the second to that opinion is now Justice Huntley in the place of Justice McFadden, retired. Nothing which we have now heard at re-argument persuades me to join that opinion. The plurality continues to insist that “the trial court should have considered extrinsic evidence of the circumstances and intentions of the original parties to the easement.” Justice Donaldson, on reading the same record, observes that the trial court did so — a view to which he continues to adhere. Perhaps the Court needs another appellate rule which authorizes direct inquiry of a trial court to establish such matters. And, because there is not, and because there is already an over-abundance of rules, perhaps there should be an appellate disposition which accomplishes the same purposes. My earlier opinion did so, and continues to do so. “The vote being as it is, the issue of a second trial will not be left open to the discretion of the trial court as was the case in Dinneen v. Finch, 100 Idaho 620, 603 P.2d 575 (1979).” In Dinneen the Court awarded a new trial on damages, but left it to the trial court to “determine whether a new trial should also be had on the issue of liability.” Id. at 628, 603 P.2d 575.
In my earlier opinion it will be noted that I spoke of the $540 monetary consideration for the easement as a “nominal sum,” and also of “the conceded fact of the nominal consideration.” At re-argument it was pointed out, and correctly so, that nothing in the record supported those statements, which I now retract, and to that extent modify the earlier opinion.1 That is not to *864say, however, that $540 may not be a nominal consideration for a right-of-way which the trial judge tended to view as amounting to a deeded right-of-way, rather than the easement which it was held to be and also held to be inaccessible to the owner of the servient estate. But, in 1968 it might have been nominal.
In Reynolds Irrigation Dist. v. Sproat, 69 Idaho 315, 206 P.2d 774 (1949), on rehearing,2 the Court said:
“That part of an estate not granted is reserved in the grantor. ‘It is not necessary that the right of the owner of the servient tenement to occupy and use his land be expressly reserved to him; it is reserved, unless expressly conveyed.’ 9 R.C.L. 797; 19 C.J.S. 978; Rolens v. City of Hutchinson, 83 Kan. 618, 112 P. 129; Coulsen v. Aberdeen-Springfield Canal Co., 47 Idaho 619, 277 P. 542, 546.”
Reynolds, 69 Idaho at 332, 206 P.2d at 785 (emphasis added).
The grant in this case was only of a perpetual easement. In the granting clause the word “exclusively” does not appear. Only in the habendum clause does it appear. In the habendum the easement continues to be recognized as “the said easement and right of way.” The habendum, according to Black’s Law Dictionary serves primarily to further identify and perhaps limit the owners who may enjoy the grant, and the extent of the grant. Black’s cites New York Indians v. United States, 170 U.S. 1, 18 S.Ct. 531, 42 L.Ed. 927 (1898). A reading of the case itself provides more clarity than does Black’s:
“... where the grant is uncertain, or indefinite concerning the estate intended to be vested in the grantee, the habendum performs the office of defining, qualifying or controlling it. Jones, Real Property § 563; Devi. Deeds, § 215.”
18 S.Ct. at 535 (emphasis added).
Here the grant is not at all uncertain. The grant is simply of an easement for a right-of-way across the servient estate. If there is uncertainty in a granting clause, the same case teaches that the habendum “may explain, enlarge, or qualify, but cannot contradict or defeat the estate granted .... ” 18 S.Ct. at 535. A grant of an easement is ordinarily not uncertain, arid here there is no uncertainty whatever. Uncertainty, if any there is, creeps in only via the habendum clause, and only in that manner.
As that case points out, “The object of the habendum clause is said to be ‘to set down again the name of the grantee, the estate that is to be made and limited, or the time that the grantee shall have in the thing granted or demised, and to what use.’ ” Id. 18 S.Ct. at 535 (emphasis added).
The use here, of course, was an easement which, in my view, was limited to the use of the grantees and their successors and assigns. I perceive, then, no conflict between the plain and unambiguous language of the granting clause and that in the habendum clause. In my first effort I ventured that the instrument’s language showed an intention that the grantees were “not at liberty to in turn let third parties use the road and easement area unless such third parties were suecessors-in-interest” to the grantees. New York Indians fortifies that view. Further research was made into Barton’s Legal Thesaurus (1980). One definition of “exclusive” is “private (not public).” P. 700. In turn, “private (not public)” includes “exclusive, ... limited ... nonofficial ... nonpublic, not open .... ” P. 406. This, too, where the “exclusive” language is found only in the habendum, and not in the unambiguous granting clause, strengthens my belief that the instrument on its face did not grant a fee, and did not divest the grantors of their right to use and occupy *865the easement area.3 Reynolds, etc., supra. At oral argument it was suggested by respondent that the grantors had not been prevented from crossing over the road, but could not traverse its length. If this was a concession that crossing over was permissible, it would seem to present an interesting anomaly in the law.
Continuing to vote for reversing the judgment below, I further modify my prior opinion to provide the further proceedings shall be in the discretion of the trial court. If there is to be a trial, I note from the respondent’s brief on the rehearing, and also at oral argument, a strong contention that in the trial court the pleadings raised no issue of ambiguity, and that there was no evidentiary trial of such an issue. In particular, mention is made of the plurality opinion’s reference to the affidavit of Mrs. Leischner offered in support of a motion for a new trial, following which is added:
“[T]he writer is constrained to say that he, as the drafter of the instrument in question, would have been able and willing to testify at the first trial ..., that it was the stated intention of Mr. Garner and the author of the document to grant the right to the use of the road exclusively to Mr. Gamer, to the exclusion of all others, including the grantor, and this intention and the document as such was clearly explained to Mrs. Leischner, the Grantor, and concurred with by her at the time she executed the document.” Respondent’s Brief on Petition for Rehearing, pp. 7-8.
The first question before the trial court, however, is to determine whether this Court has held the instrument ambiguous. The plurality alone seems to so hold. I continue to see the issue as one of construction and interpretation.

. It would be a simple matter to rewrite that opinion and omit the challenged language. Although this has become the practice of the Court, I think the bench and bar would be better served if it were discontinued. That something is to be learned by the bench and bar when the Court corrects its own errors or omissions is demonstrated by the cases some *864twenty or so years ago where the opinions were not simply withdrawn, discarded, and replaced.

. In this case the Idaho Reports contain both the original opinion, and the petition on rehear-tag, the latter being authored by Justice C.J. Taylor, who succeeded Justice Miller, following the original opinion. A reading of the two opinions discloses the evolution of the final opinion of the Court.

. As noted infra, it may have been the intent to draft and execute an easement which did exclude the grantor from any right or estate in the easement area. But, as respondent has well pointed out, this action was not to reform the instrument, but to enforce it.