Court Opinion

ID: 9713647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:19:28.607896+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:19.545525
License: Public Domain

*92Markell, J.,
delivered the following dissenting opinion.
On both sides this case, I suspect, may be much ado about nothing between unneighborly neighbors. If the decision were based on a narrow construction of the reservation in the 1919 deed, in special view of the alleged cramped size and shape of the Williams lot, I should doubt the result but refrain from a solitary dissent. Such a decision would be not altogether unlike the decision in Good v. Petticrew, 165 Va. 526, 183 S. E. 217. But the opinion in the instant case proceeds, with relentless logic, from an assumed premise to a conclusion contained in the premise. The premise and the conclusion, I think, are unsound and may create a bad precedent.
The assumed premise is this: In a deed of land in a wilderness, obviously intended to make a beginning of converting the wilderness into a place of civilized habitation, and not to perpetuate the wilderness or wilderness travel, a reservation of “a right of way * * * by the existing road” and a grant of a “right of way over the existing farm roads” — are (a) more restricted than would be a way of necessity and (5) restricted to a one-way road indicated by existing wagon ruts. A-reservation ordinarily may be more strictly construed than a grant. However, when a grant and a reservation are created in the same deed, in the same clause, in the same words, for the same purpose, manifestly they must receive the same construction. The majority opinion in Condry v. Laurie, 184 Md. 317, 41 A. 2d 66 (as is indicated by the strong dissenting opinion to the contrary) seems to hold that a way of necessity is a creature of substantive law, not wholly dependent upon the intention of the parties. No case has been cited in which a way of necessity has been restricted to a one way road. In the instant case the majority opinion in Condry v. Laurie seems to be abandoned in favor of the dissenting opinion. But for the majority opinion in that case I should think that property owners might by express provision nega*93tive a way of necessity altogether or restrict it as they see fit, e. g., to a right of way eight feet wide, or to a right of way by wheelbarrow only, or to a right of way of the width of an existing wilderness road or wagon ruts. The words of the 1919 deed, however, are not words which would be used to express less than nothing— to cut down what the law itself would imply in the absence of anything expressed.
To avoid such a narrow construction of this deed it is not necessary to assume that the parties in 1919 envisaged such a Paradise as has been created in much of Anne Arundel County in the last twenty-five years. But in 1919, as now, a one-way road was a temporary primitive convenience — or necessity. Nor need we assume that the parties contemplated use of the largest trucks and trailers of which we have acquired judicial knowledge through negligence cases. Any deed that looked beyond the wilderness state necessarily looked beyond a one-way road.
This court apparently does not differ with Judge Clark’s view that the Gassaway deed in 1915, without express grant of a right of way, granted by implication a way of necessity. Such a way should not be limited to a one-way road. The result would be that any present owner of part of the Gassaway tract could prevent obstruction of a two-way road, which the court now holds the present plaintiffs cannot prevent. Such a result seems not only unreasonable but absurd. The right of way through the Williams property would be a two-way road for the Gassaway grantees and a one-way road for everyone else on the peninsula. The question is not whether the reservation covered a “reasonable” way or the “existing” way, but what is a reasonable construction in all the circumstances of “existing” way. Is it restricted to a one-way road? I think not.
I cannot brush aside the Howard plat, recorded in 1922, to which Judge Clark ascribes considerable significance. Of course, a grantor cannot by a declaration subsequent to his grant, without the consent of his *94grantee, narrow his grant or (what is the same thing) broaden a reservation in it. But the Howard plat was more than an ex parte declaration. The grant and the reservation in the 1919 deed created reciprocal rights in a road extending the entire length of the peninsula. Williams had the same interest, no more, no less, as Hall and Gassaway and future owners in establishing a uniform width of the road throughout its length. None of them could have expected or intended to make the Williams property a bottle-neck, restricting all other owners to a one-way road through the Williams property but giving all owners, including Williams, a twenty foot road throughout the rest of the peninsula. I think the recording of the Howard plat in 1922 was an offer of mutual settlement of the location and width of the entire road. If Williams, expressly or by acquiescence, accepted the Howard plat he was as much bound by it as if he had signed it. I appreciate that in the absence of any testimony in the record we are somewhat embarrassed as to drawing inferences from conduct or silence for some twenty-five years after the recording of the Howard plat. It cannot, however, be inferred from mere lapse of time that the other owners acquiesced in making the Williams property such a bottle-neck in the peninsula road. The belated building of a stone wall on the Williams property suggests the contrary, viz., that neighbors did not encroach on the Williams property through mere spite, but because now and then two vehicles must pass and cannot pass on a one-way road.
“Stone walls do not a prison make” — nor wagon ruts a road.