Court Opinion

ID: 9585954
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:05:31.381421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:24:17.474736
License: Public Domain

*98Justice PLEICONES
Dissenting:
I respectfully dissent, and would hold the circuit court erred in limiting the scope of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism’s (PRT’s) easement over Inlet Harbour Drive.
The circuit court’s finding of an implied easement has not been appealed and is therefore the law of the case. E.g. Dreher v. Dreher, 370 S.C. 75, 634 S.E.2d 646 (2006). The sole issue is whether the court erred in limiting the PRT’s road easement as it relates to the second tract it purchased from respondent to “environmental purposes associated with maintaining the navigability of Murrells Inlet.” The majority and I agree on the applicable legal principles, but I draw a different conclusion about the parties’ intentions after examining the facts and circumstances surrounding the conveyance of the 3.56 acre tract.
In 1976, PRT bought a 4.2 acre tract from respondent at the behest of the Army Corps of Engineers. This 1976 deed contained an express easement limiting PRT’s right to ingress and egress over Inlet Harbour Drive to “the sole purpose of constructing and maintaining the north sand dike and jetty for the Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, Navigation Project.” More than a year later, PRT purchased the 3.56 tract at the insistence of the Corps. Among the facts and circumstances surrounding this second transaction was PRT’s belief, ultimately vindicated, that this tract would not be necessary for the Corps’ Murrells Inlet project. Accordingly, there was a need to preserve this tract’s commercial viability. Even more critically in my opinion, the 1977 deed to the 3.56 acres contains no express easement, much less one limiting PRT’s access to Inlet Harbour Drive, as had the March 1976 deed to the 4.2 acre tract. As I view the facts and circumstances surrounding the second conveyance, I can draw only one conclusion: that the parties did not intend any restriction upon the scope of PRT’s Inlet Harbour Drive easement as it relates to the 3.56 acre tract.
Accordingly, I would reverse.