Court Opinion

ID: 8905111
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 01:48:02.922955+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:08:06.341525
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The dimensions of the state’s resistance to the decrees in these cases are, in my view, over-stated by the opinion for the court, but I fully agree that by its policy with respect to this litigation the state has unduly complicated the issues without advancing its own cause. I agree further that an apportionment of fishing rights half to the treaty Indians and half to all other fishermen is binding on this panel. United States v. Washington, 520 F.2d 676 (9th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1086, 96 S.Ct. 877, 47 L.Ed.2d 97 (1976). However, the court undertakes to restate the rationale for the apportionment rule of our earlier decision, and I find it necessary to suggest that the explanation of this critical point remains somewhat obscure.
The prior decision of this court and the opinion for the court on this appeal rely on an analogy to a cotenancy or to a “quasi-co-tenancy” to rationalize the rule of even apportionment. The principles of a cotenancy apply to the legal relation among parties who share a right of possession in real or personal property.1 But the parties to this dispute claim rights of access and exploitation in a wildlife resource of fluctuating and uncertain extent. These rights do not depend upon possession, or even upon ownership, of the wildlife itself. The cotenancy analogy would be of dubious relevance even in an era when the supply of fish exceeded the demands of the fishing population.2 Certainly it is inadequate to resolve the present conflict between treaty rights and asserted state authority to conserve and allocate a fishery that cannot sustain the full demands of all the parties to this litigation. A cotenant, absent acts of waste or ouster, has the right to possess and use the entire property.3 Accordingly, *1135serious application of the analogy might permit a fishing group to take all the fish it has the capacity to catch, a result contrary to the one we affirmed in the principal case.4
Most importantly, the concept of a cotenancy does not help the court determine what share of the disputed rights should be allocated to each of the parties. By relying so heavily upon the theory, the court seems *1136to imply that an even apportionment follows from creation of a cotenancy; but, of course, it does not. Cotenancy is not synonymous with entitlement to equal shares.5 Nor does the right of a cotenant to partition provide guidance for an equitable division of the fish. Effective use of that remedy presupposes a method of determining the percentage interests of the parties, but that is precisely the question to be answered in the case.
By using the cotenancy theory to explain the critical ruling on apportionment, the court tends to mask the most difficult problems of this litigation: definition of the rights recognized by the treaties, reconciliation of those rights with the state’s legitimate interest in conservation,6 and declaration of the parameters of the state’s authority to protect- its interest by appropriate regulation. These are the issues that must be resolved if the district court is ever to return the task of supervising the fishery to the state.
Indian treaties are not second-class agreements, and rights declared by them may not be whittled down year by year as the state asserts a need to exercise its regulatory authority. The state and, absent its cooperation, the federal courts, must protect the fishing resource in a manner that respects the rights of the treaty parties. The boundaries of the state’s authority and any rule of apportionment must therefore be drawn with precise reference to the treaty understandings. The district court undertook to explain those understandings in its original decision, and proper review of its ruling requires a like analysis. No doubt it would be correct to determine that the Indian tribes retained by treaty the right to fish for subsistence and ceremonial purposes and the right to a fair opportunity to compete in the recreational and commercial fisheries. But it has not been clearly demonstrated that the rule of fifty percent apportionment is a necessary and proper implementation of those treaty rights.
I recognize that the opinion of the court does not advocate strict adherence to the technical rules of common law cotenancy as a means of resolving this case. The defects of the analogy, however, should be noted specifically, since alternative justifications for the apportionment rule have not yet been fully discussed. This panel is bound by United States v. Washington, supra, and thus I concur in today’s judgment. However, I would not attempt to restate or explain that decision by means of an inappropriate analogy. We do not sustain the dignity of the treaties in question by deriving an apportionment rule from a hesitant reference to property concepts that are unrelated to the rights asserted by the parties.

. “For indeed tenancies in common differ in nothing from sole estates but merely in the blending and unity of possession.” 2 W. Blackstone, Commentaries * 180.

. The term “tenants in common” was used in an early case to describe the rights of state citizens to the ownership of New Jersey oyster beds. Corfield v. Coryell, 6 Fed.Cas. 546, 552 (C.C.E.D.Pa.1823). The phrase, however, was used solely to explain the court’s holding that state citizens collectively held one hundred percent of the rights to the shellfish to the exclusion of noncitizens, rather than as a point of departure for explaining a method of division.

. 2 American Law of Property § 6.13, at 52-53 (A. J. Casner ed. 1952); R. Powell & P. Rohan, Powell on Real Property ¶ 603 (1 vol. ed. 1968); H. Tiffany, The Law of Real Property § 199 (3d ed. 1970).
At common law, property rules pertaining to ouster and waste insured that cotenants shared finite resources fairly, but to apply those rules to effect an allocation of the parties’ rights here would stretch an already attenuated analogy to the breaking point. Moreover, there is substantial doubt that the apportionment theory of this case follows from those rules.
The standards which define waste for which a life tenant or tenant for years may recover are not necessarily applicable as between co-tenants. The English rule is that, since a cotenant of a fee simple estate has the right to enjoy and use the common property in any reasonable way, the usual and ordinary use of the property by an owner in severalty is not waste. 2 American Law of Property, supra § 6.15, at 64; 2 W. Walsh, Commentaries on the Law of Real Property § 131, at 69 (1947). Thus, any cotenant may cut trees that are mature and fit for cutting, Martyn v. Knowllys, 101 Eng.Rep. 1313 (K.B.1799), and may develop and operate mining land, Job v. Potton, 20 Eq. 84 (1875), without liability for waste. In the United States, while it is clear that acts which amount to destructive permanent damage to the common property are held to constitute waste, E. Hopkins, Handbook on the Law of Real Property § 214, at 342 (1896); 2 W. Walsh, supra § 131, at 72, some cases have followed the English rule allowing the cutting and sale of timber, Hihn v. Peck, 18 Cal. 641 (1861); Buchanan v. Jencks, 38 R.I. 443, 96 A. 307 (1916); Williams v. Bruton, 133 S.C. 395, 131 S.E. 18 (1925); McDodrill v. Pardee & Curtin Lumber Co., 40 W.Va. 564, 21 S.E. 878 (1895), and the operation of mines, quarries, and oil wells, Prairie Oil & Gas Co. v. Allen, 2 F.2d 566 (8th Cir. 1924); Cascaden v. Dunbar, 191 F. 471 (9th Cir. 1911); McCord v. Oakland Quicksilver Mining Co., 64 Cal. 134, 27 P. 863 (1883); Payne v. Callahan, 37 Cal.App.2d 503, 99 P.2d 1050 (1940), while others have held that the cutting and sale of timber, Fitzhugh v. Nor *1135wood, 153 Ark. 412, 241 S.W. 8 (1922); Emmons v. Evans, 178 Ky. 180, 198 S.W. 900 (1917), or the development or operation of mines or oil wells, Clark v. Whitfield, 218 Ala. 593, 119 So. 631 (1929); Abbey v. Wheeler, 170 N.Y. 122, 62 N.E. 1074 (1902); McNeely v. South Penn Oil Co., 58 W.Va. 438, 52 S.E. 480 (1905), constitutes waste. In cases following the latter rule, courts have tended to call the action one for waste but to hold the defendant merely to a duty to account for the net proceeds from the operations rather than to impose the usual penalties, such as treble damages, for waste. See generally cases cited above and 2 American Law of Property, supra § 6.15; 2 W. Walsh, supra § 131.
Injunctive relief in an action for waste by one cotenant against another is granted only for waste which is “of a malicious character, or so unusual or unreasonable as to constitute a wanton destruction of the estate.” Mott v. Underwood, 148 N.Y. 463, 42 N.E. 1048, 1050 (1896); see McCord v. Oakland Quicksilver Mining Co., 64 Cal. 134, 27 P. 863 (1883); R. Powell & P. Rohan, supra ¶ 647, at 695.
With reference to ouster, a tenant who excludes his cotenants from the commonly held property by adverse possession is guilty of an ouster, and an action in ejectment may be brought by a dispossessed tenant. J. Cribbet, Principles of the Law of Property 104 (2d ed. 1975). “[T]he ousting tenant’s possession must be exclusive, for mere possession and use of the entire property by one cotenant is not an ouster, nor is his possession adverse, so long as the other cotenants remain voluntarily out of possession, and are not kept out of possession by the acts of the possessor-tenant.” 2 American Law of Property, supra § 6.13, at 52-54 (footnotes omitted).

. While courts will not interfere by way of injunction with cotenants’ exercise of their rights to use and enjoyment of the cotenancy even when one cotenant has committed waste, see note 3 supra, an action for accounting for rents and profits between cotenants may be available when one cotenant has taken certain advantages from the property. Even when a cotenant’s use does not constitute waste or ouster, he is required to account to his cotenants for their proportionate share of the net amount received from the cutting and selling of timber or the operation of mines or oil wells. Prairie Oil & Gas Co. v. Allen, 2 F.2d 566 (8th Cir. 1924) (oil); Cascaden v. Dunbar, 191 F. 471 (9th Cir. 1911) (gold mining); Buchanan v. Jencks, 38 R.I. 443, 96 A. 307 (1916) (timber); see Martyn v. Knowllys, 101 Eng.Rep. 1313 (K.B.1799). However, a cotenant is not required to account for crops grown and harvested by him. 2 American Law of Property, supra note 3, § 6.14, at 60; see, e. g., Black v. Black, 91 Cal.App.2d 328, 204 P.2d 950 (1949); Le Barron v. Babcock, 122 N.Y. 153, 25 N.E. 253 (1890). The distinction seems to be that a cotenant need not account for profits from a use of the cotenancy which does not reduce the permanent value of the property. Cf. 3 B. Witkin, Summary of California Law § 216, at 1948 (8th ed. 1973), suggesting that because of the possibility of exhausting the resources, the rule of accounting is a special rule applying only to oil and mineral rights. In Mott v. Underwood, 148 N.Y. 463, 42 N.E. 1048 (1896), the court assumed that a cotenant who planted oysters in a commonly held oyster bed could prevent his cotenants from interfering with the crop, though no cotenant could maintain an action for trespass or conversion against his cotenant for taking natural oysters from the land held in common. That case suggests that oysters, at least, might be treated in a manner similar to crops for purposes of an accounting. To the extent that a run of anadromous fish is capable of self-perpetuation, that is, up to the point where fishing activity reduces the quantity of fish in future runs, perhaps each cotenant should be allowed to take free from a duty to account.
Another factor in the equitable equation is that the State of Washington operates salmon hatcheries. In an action for an accounting, a cotenant who makes improvements on the property generally may not claim a credit for such expenditures. 2 American Law of Property, supra note 3, § 6.18, at 81. In an action for partition, however, a cotenant who has made an improvement is awarded any additional amount which the property might bring as a result of the improvement. Id. at 83; IV S. Symons, Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence § 1389, at 1018 (5th ed. 1941). Apparently neither the district court nor this court has considered whether the state’s operation of hatcheries should have an effect on apportionment of the fish. Cf. Department of Game v. Puyallup Tribe, 414 U.S. 44, 94 S.Ct. 330, 38 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973) (Puyallup II) (reserving the question of whether the catch of steelhead that was developed from the state hatchery program could be taken into consideration in allocating the yearly catch between treaty Indians and sport fishermen).
Again, the cotenancy analogy, if taken seriously with reference to the rule of even apportionment, creates more problems than it solves.

. Each tenant in common may have a share greater or smaller than the shares of the others. 2 American Law of Property, supra note 3, § 6.5, at 19. If the shares are not fixed in the instrument creating the cotenancy it may be presumed that the cotenants take in equal shares, but an intent that they hold different fractional shares may be established by the circumstances. Id. at 19-20; E. Hopkins, supra note 3, § 209, at 336.

. See Puyallup Tribe v. Department of Game, 391 U.S. 392, 398, 88 S.Ct. 1725, 20 L.Ed.2d 689 (1968) (Puyallup I).