Court Opinion

ID: 9764303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:18:32.950576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:55.665020
License: Public Domain

John I. Pürtle, Justice, dissenting. It was the appellant landowner who commenced this action to close a road across his lands. The road had existed to one degree or another for more than ten years. It had been shown on county maps as a county road for many years and the county had maintained it for at least six to seven years. It was a mail route and a bus route and more than ten families lived on the road. Owner Presnull and his subsequent grantees had traveled the road for more than seven years. Appellant admitted he was aware of Presnull’s use of the road from 1973 until the trial in 1983. All the appellees claimed was a private and public prescriptive right to use this county maintained bus route, mail route and road, to travel to and from home, church and city. They are not interested in whether they have a prescriptive right, adverse possession or corporeal or incorporeal hereditament. They could not care less whether a right to possession of any public thoroughfare, road, highway or public park can be acquired adversely. That subject is simply not relevant. They seek to establish the road — not to destroy it. The majority opinion quotes Ark. Stat. Ann. § 76-104 and § 76-105 as enacted in 1923. Both statutes were slightly changed by Act 165 of 1983. However, they remain basically unchanged. The result in this case should be unaffected. Arkansas Stat. Ann. § 76-104 (Supp. 1983) provides that the county judge may, at his discretion, designate a road that “is the most direct route to the county courthouse for ten (10) or more families, and which road is graded and has been used by the general public as a road for at least two (2) years.” That statute is clear, plain and unambiguous. It needs no crutches for its interpretation. It means exactly what it says. Neither of the statutes quoted by the majority has any language whatsoever to indicate they were enacted for the protection of the county. These statutes clearly were intended to benefit the public. Act 666 of 1923 has no place in their opinion except to lengthen it. What difference does it make to a landowner if he loses his property to the public for a road in two or seven years. After standing by and observing the road maintained by the county made into a school bus route and mail route and used by people going to and from church for up to nine years, he now seeks to fence them in. The evidence here would even support a seven year use by people without the consent of the owner. The best I can figure, the majority holds Ark. Stat. Ann. §§ 76-104 and 105 are probably constitutional but have a meaning other than what they state. This is the most strained and warped construction I have ever had the duty to read. I would affirm the decision of the trial court.