Court Opinion

ID: 9781762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 17:31:35.776889+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:39.212037
License: Public Domain

Justice MARTINEZ
dissenting only as to part II.C.
As the opinion by the chief justice correctly notes, this case involves the settlement rights of people who have been largely dispossessed of their rights in land when Taylor fenced the property. There is little dispute that the settlers enjoyed extensive rights in the lands that comprise the Taylor Ranch for about one hundred years. Rather, the dispute concerns the extent of the rights, if any, that survive when we construe settlement rights conceived in a different era pursuant to contemporary standards. In short, the difficulty of this case is that we must address the grave injustices imposed upon the settlers’ successors in interest by interpreting documents from a different era, intended to reflect Beaubien’s intent, through the perspective of modern property law. Nonetheless, equitable principles in our modern jurisprudence, properly construed and applied, permit us to recognize the rights of the settlers and their successors in interest.
Because I concur with the chief justice’s analysis and conclusion that the landowners have access rights through a prescriptive easement, an easement by estoppel, and an easement from prior use, I join to make it the majority opinion and refer to it as such herein. As the majority explains, the Beau-bien document is an imperfect attempt at an express grant of rights clearly “meant to create permanent rights that run with the land,” maj. op. at 948-949; such access rights were an “integral feature of the settlement system under which the settlers and Beau-bien were operating.” Id. at 949. Additionally, the Gilpin agreement provides further support that the settlement rights granted by Beaubien were intended to run with the land because that agreement required that Gilpin take the land on the condition that he recognize and confirm the settlement rights.
I also agree with the majority’s analysis and conclusions regarding the implied servi-tudes upon which it bases its holding. The majority determines that the same rules should be applied to easements and profits and adopts the Restatement’s position that easements by prescription do not always re*958quire a finding of adversity; instead such easements may result from an intended but imperfectly created servitude.
In addition, I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the landowners’ access rights are also found through an easement from prior use and an easement by estoppel: The elements for both of these easements are met in this case. I particularly agree with the majority’s strong language regarding the injustices that are avoided in finding access rights through an easement by estoppel.
In short, I summarize the majority’s analysis, and my support for it, to emphasize the many areas of agreement I have with the majority and the extent to which I concur and join the majority opinion.
However, it is significant to me that the trial court’s findings that the landowners also enjoyed access for fishing, hunting and recreation are supported by the record. As a result, I would apply the reasoning of the majority opinion regarding prescriptive easement, easement by estoppel, and easement from prior use to conclude that the landowners have also established access rights for fishing, hunting, and recreation. Thus, while I join the majority opinion as to its analysis regarding the source of the landowners’ rights, I do not join part II.C. of the majority’s opinion, which excludes fishing, hunting, and recreation rights from its holding. However, I recognize that part II.C. of the chief justice’s opinion is the controlling opinion in this case.
More specifically, though I agree with the majority’s finding that the Beaubien document is an imperfect one and accordingly must be considered alongside extrinsic evidence in order to find the landowners have access rights through a prescriptive easement, an easement by estoppel, and an easement from prior use, see maj. op. at 947-948, I believe that document cannot be read to limit the landowners’ access rights to grazing, firewood, and timber. In my view, the imperfect nature of the Beaubien document requires us to look beyond that document to determine the full scope of the landowners’ access rights. As a result, I would not limit the landowners’ access rights; instead, based on the evidence in the record demonstrating that “settlement rights” encompassed more than grazing, firewood, and timber, I would also include access rights for fishing, hunting, and recreation through a prescriptive easement, an easement by estoppel, and an easement from prior use.
I. The Trial Court Findings Regarding Settlement Rights for Fishing, Hunting, and Recreation
The trial court made strong findings that “[t]he plaintiffs’ predecessors in title grazed cattle and sheep, harvested timber, gathered firewood, fished, hunted and recreated on the land of the defendant from the 1800s to the date the land was acquired by the defendant, in 1960.” The trial court also found that, prior to 1960 when Taylor fenced the land, the landowners referred to that land as “open range” and that the landowners were “never denied access to the land for grazing of cattle, sheep, harvesting timber, gathering firewood, fishing, hunting, or recreating.” My review of the record reveals that that the trial court’s findings of fact that fishing, hunting, and recreation were included in the settlement rights contemplated by the Beau-bien document are correct.
Several expert historians filed reports in this case, some of whom also testified at trial. Some of these reports include commentary regarding fishing, hunting, and recreation as part of settlement rights. For example, the report filed by Dr. Michael Meyer, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, concluded that the common lands in the settlement systems provided material resources such as “fuel to keep warm during the cold winter months, a varied diet of fruits, vegetables, grains and meat.” The reference to “meat” as one of the resources available from the common lands implicitly refers to hunting that took place on the common lands. Dr. Meyer’s report further expanded on the uses of the common areas, stating that
[t]he common lands were put to many uses in Spanish and Mexican New Mexico, including fishing, hunting (of wild turkeys, deer and other game), threshing, recreation, the gathering of wild herbs, fruits and nuts (especially piñones) and the disposal of refuse but most importantly they *959were used for grazing, watering of stock animals, and the cutting of wood.
Dr. Meyer’s report also explained that among the various primary documents giving a legal basis for common lands use is the Plan de Pitic, which was the founding document for several New Mexico towns, but also “specifically given general applicability for all of the towns in the northern New Spain.” This document provided that common lands be set aside around each settlement “so that the settlers can use them for recreation [and] go out with their cattle without doing damage.”
Dr. Marianne Stoller, professor of anthropology at the Colorado College, filed an expert report and testified at trial. Although her report does not explicitly mention fishing, hunting, and recreation, her report concludes that the Beaubien document clearly guarantees the landowners’ right of access to common lands. Significantly, her report also concludes that the Beaubien document “is made more understandable by looking at the context of the political and social circumstances surrounding its creation, and by understanding the nature of the economic circumstances, ecology, and topographical characteristics of the area.”
Although Dr. Stoller’s report did not expressly address fishing, hunting, and recreation, her trial testimony did. When asked to express her opinion regarding the use of the common lands by successive generations of landowners between 1863 and 1960, she replied, in pertinent part, that “[t]hey were used for hunting of wild animals. They were used for fishing_And recreation.” When asked whether there was specific, visible evidence of such use of the common lands, she replied:
There were roads that went partway up most of the tributary valleys.... There were trails that crisscrossed the mountain lands_There were signs of people having cut wood for the purpose I described. There were animals, there were there were sheep and cattle grazing. There were wild animals to be seen. There were fish in the streams.
Additionally, Dr. Stoller, consistent with her report, testified that one must look beyond the text of the Beaubien document when interpreting the intent of Beaubien and the settlers with regard to access rights. When asked about Beaubien’s purpose in authoring the document, Dr. Stoller replied that his purpose was to record the use rights of the people to the common lands. However, she specifically pointed out that one reading the Beaubien document must look beyond the actual text of that document in interpreting the rights it includes:
He set aside land for pasture, lowlands, the vega lands, specifically saying that these lands were to be used only for animals that were necessary for domestic purposes .... And he designated the lands that could be used for pastures, for flocks — and he did not use the word “flocks, ” but this is to be understood, given the nature of the economy of these people, an agro-pastoral economy.
(Emphasis added.) Dr. Stoller further explained the need to look beyond the text of the document to properly interpret the scope of the access rights it contemplated:
Because [the Beaubien document], like any document, has to be interpreted. And one has to go beyond it to understand the geography. That document contains place names. One has to know where those place names are. It refers to different types of lands. One has to know what those lands are, where they are. All those kinds of things are necessary in order to interpret such a document.... The lands spoken of in the document include the agricultural lands, they include the mountain lands, they include the pasture lands, the vega lands. Lands, in other words, that provide different resources and that are for different purposes.
This testimony demonstrates the necessity of looking to other evidence beyond the Beau-bien document in order to fully understand the different uses that settlers made of these lands. Such other evidence demonstrates that fishing, hunting, and recreation were uses to which the lands were put.
Thus, Dr. Stoller’s testimony is significant for two reasons. First, her testimony establishes that any interpretation of the rights *960contemplated by the Beaubien document must necessarily go beyond the specific text of that document and consider other evidence of the social, political, historical, and economic circumstances at the time the document was authored; we must look beyond the text of the Beaubien document to determine the scope of the access rights to which the landowners are entitled.
Second, Dr. Stoller’s testimony demonstrates that fishing, hunting, and recreation, although not expressly mentioned in the Beaubien document, were important to the settlers, just as grazing and gathering firewood and timber were. Accordingly, I believe that the evidence of settlers’ fishing, hunting, and recreation activities is evidence of the “political and social circumstances surrounding” the creation of the Beaubien document, and that such evidence increases our “understanding the nature of the economic circumstances, ecology, and topographical characteristics of the area.”
Further, the expert report and testimony of Dr. Maria Montoya, professor of history and American culture at the University of Michigan, also supports the trial court’s findings. The majority of Dr. Montoya’s scholarly research and writing relates to the Maxwell land grant. The Maxwell grant, although not the subject of the present case, is nonetheless closely related to the Sangre de Cristo grant that is the subject of this case. The Maxwell grant, located directly to the southeast of the Sangre de Cristo grant, was also owned by Beaubien. Dr. Montoya testified that the history of the two grants is closely related and that she studied the Beaubien document in the context of her research of the Maxwell grant.
More specifically, Dr. Montoya’s report noted that the activities of the settlers that lived on both the Maxwell and the Sangre de Cristo grants were similar. She explained that on both grants, people “settled along the river valleys using similar land use settlement patterns of community living based around a plaza with privately held strips of land (varas), and common areas used for hunting, grazing, and wood collection.” (Emphasis added.) Her report traces the use of the land that makes up both grants back to the Plains tribes, opining that although these tribes practiced agriculture,
hunting was the mainstay of their existence. ... Large animals such as buffalo, mountain sheep, antelope, deer and elk provided not only food but also material goods. They used the hides to make housing covers, sinew for thread, rawhide for ropes and straps, and tanned skins for clothing and shoes.
We can infer that this use of the lands for hunting continued after the Mexican government began to approve land grants such as the Maxwell and Sangre de Cristo grants based on community opposition to the Maxwell grant. The Maxwell grant, unlike the Sangre de Cristo grant, did not expressly reserve rights to common lands for settlers through a document similar to the Beaubien document. As a result, some members of the community feared that the Maxwell grant would be put to commercial use to the exclusion of historical, local use by the settlers for hunting and grazing. In particular, soon after Beaubien received the Maxwell grant, a community member named Father Jose Antonio Martinez lodged an objection. One of Martinez’s grounds for objecting was that putting the lands that comprised the Maxwell grant (which were put to similar use as the lands that comprised the Sangre de Cristo grant) into private hands would deprive those living on the lands of their livelihood, which consisted of hunting as well as grazing livestock.
The conclusion that hunting was an important aspect of the settlers’ activities on both the Maxwell and Sangre de Cristo grants is supported by the findings of another expert. A report filed by Malcolm Ebright, an historian, attorney, and president of the Center for Land Grant Studies in New Mexico, also concluded that Martinez opposed the Maxwell grant because the grant “included the communal hunting and grazing lands” of settlers.
Finally, testimony from at least one of the landowners also supports the trial court’s conclusion that recreation was included in the settlement rights contemplated by Beaubien and the settlers when the document was authored. Emilio Lobato, Jr., who resides *961near the Taylor Ranch, can trace his ancestry back to Cristobal Lobato, one of the early settlers. In addition, his great-grandmother was an original settler in 1851. He described the use he and his family made of the land when he was a child, stating that he would use the land for “hiking, horseback riding, just exploring.” He also testified that he and his family would go on picnics on the Taylor Ranch land. Although such contemporary recreational use of the Taylor Ranch lands occurred several generations after Beaubien authored the document and the original settlers arrived, the fact that such use persisted from generation to generation is further evidence that recreation rights were considered settlement rights and thus contemplated by the Beaubien document.
In sum, the evidence presented at trial and through expert reports, as well as the testimony of at least one lay witness, supports the trial court’s findings of fact that fishing, hunting, and recreation were an important part of the settlers’ activities in the region that includes the Taylor Ranch at the time the Beaubien document was authored in the 1860s. In addition, much of the expert testimony and reports also concluded that the Beaubien document must be construed by considering the social, economic, historical, and geographical context in which it was authored, and not strictly based on the actual text. As a result, applying the same analysis as the majority, I conclude that fishing, hunting, and recreation rights were contemplated by the Beaubien document and must therefore be included in the access rights to which the landowners are entitled.
II. The Scope of Access Rights
My disagreement with the majority opinion is with its application of easements by prescription, by estoppel, and from prior use to limit the landowners’ access rights to “the rights memorialized in the Beaubien document.” Maj. op. at 956. Instead, applying the legal frameworks of easements by prescription, by estoppel, and from prior use to the trial court’s findings of fact results in my determination that the landowners are entitled to access rights for fishing, hunting, and recreation as well as for grazing, firewood, and timber.
Looking, as we must, beyond the Beaubien document, which is imperfect, to extrinsic evidence to determine the full scope of the access rights intended by Beaubien reveals that access rights for fishing, hunting, and recreation must be recognized. The Gilpin agreement is one source of important extrinsic evidence. Significantly, both the Beau-bien and Gilpin documents refer to settlement rights as if the scope of those rights was understood. Because I believe that there was no attempt to enumerate the specific settlement rights in either document, that neither document specifically mentions fishing, hunting, and recreation is not dispos-itive as to the scope of the settlement rights accorded to the first settlers.
As a result, extrinsic evidence beyond these documents must be considered. Such extrinsic evidence includes the social, economic, political and historical character of settlement rights. As my discussion of the record reveals, evidence adduced at trial supports the trial court’s findings that fishing, hunting, and recreation were contemplated by the Beaubien document, and thus the Gilpin agreement, although not mentioned individually in either document. Accordingly, all six access rights sought by the landowners are properly recognized through a prescriptive easement, an easement by estop-pel, and an easement from prior use.
Because I would hold that the landowners have access rights for all six settlement rights, I am unpersuaded by the four reasons given by the majority for limiting its recognition of access rights to grazing, firewood, and timber. See maj. op. at 956. I briefly address each of these four reasons.
First, the majority asserts that the “document is the strongest evidence we have of the parties’ intentions and expectations.” Id. While I agree that the Beaubien document is strong evidence of the parties’ intentions, that document cannot be considered as the only expression of those intentions, or even the strongest expression. Instead, because the document is imperfect and ambiguous, extrinsic evidence must be considered in reconstructing those intentions. Because the *962trial court’s findings of fact regarding all six settlement rights are supported by the record, I find that it is logically consistent to determine that the landowners have established access rights for all six settlement rights; to find otherwise treats the Beaubien document as a proper, perfect, express grant.
Second, the majority contends that the rights in the document were “likely the most necessary.” Id. I agree that grazing herds and gathering firewood and timber were necessary for the survival of the settlers. The record supports such a conclusion. See id. However, a finding that fishing and hunting were necessary settlement rights is also supported by the record. Further, although recreation is arguably not necessary for survival, there is ample evidence in the record that recreation was considered an important settlement right. See part I, supra.
Third, the majority gives weight to the fact that the Fort Massachusetts lease lists the same rights as the Beaubien document to support its exclusion of fishing, hunting and recreation rights. However, because the record reveals that the purpose of Fort Massachusetts was importantly different from the purpose of the Sangre de Cristo settlement, I do not give great weight to that lease in discerning the full scope of the landowners’ access rights. More specifically, as explained by Dr. Stoller, the purpose of Fort Massachusetts was to “protect the settlements ... and to further U.S. policy towards Indians of rounding them up and confining them to a reservation.” Although the rights to graze and collect timber and firewood articulated in the lease were necessary activities for maintaining an army fort, the fundamentally different purposes between Fort Massachusetts and the Sangre de Cristo settlements lead me to give little weight to that lease as evidence regarding the scope of the landowners’ access rights.
Finally, the majority argues that the Beau-bien document is the “only evidence we have of an attempted express grant,” which is important for a claim of a prescriptive easement. See maj. op. at 956. While I agree with this as a statement of fact, I do not believe that it provides a basis for discriminating between the settlement rights of grazing and collecting firewood and timber that are contained in the Beaubien document and the settlement rights of fishing, hunting, and recreation that are supported by other evidence in the record. As noted, the Beaubien document is an imperfect, ambiguous document that must be interpreted and construed by referring to extrinsic evidence; the evidence adduced at trial strongly supports the trial court’s findings of fact that all six rights were considered settlement rights.
Accordingly, I believe that the legal concepts of prescriptive easement, easement by estoppel, and easement from prior use, when applied to the evidence adduced at trial, compel my conclusion that the landowners are entitled to all six settlement rights.
III. Conclusion
While I agree with the majority’s articulation of the controlling law in this case, I disagree with its application of that law to limit the scope of the landowners’ access rights. Because I conclude that the trial court’s findings that “[t]he plaintiffs predecessors in title grazed cattle and sheep, harvested timber, gathered firewood, fished, hunted and recreated on the land of the defendant from the 1800s to the date the land was acquired by the defendant, in 1960” are supported by the record, I would find that the landowners enjoy access rights for grazing, collecting firewood and timber, fishing, hunting, and recreation on the Taylor Ranch. Accordingly, I dissent from part II.C. of the majority opinion and join the majority opinion as to all other parts.