Court Opinion

ID: 9792564
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:30:48.917516+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:43.627455
License: Public Domain

HOWE, Justice
(concurring):
I concur in the majority opinion. I believe that the word “accepting” found in U.C.A., 1943, § 36-1-7 has a special and limited meaning as used there and has nothing to do with the acceptance of warranty deeds.
“Accepting” as used there means acceptance by the public of a common law dedication for a highway made by the owner of the fee. Acceptance is a necessary element of dedication. This is well explained in 26 C.J.S., Dedication, § 34(a) (1956) at 459, where it is written:
A dedication at common law, like a contract, consists of an offer and acceptance; and subject to some exceptions considered below, the general rule is well settled that a dedication is not binding and conclusive on either party until acceptance, and, of course, this rule applies to the grantee of the party offering to make the dedication. A dedication without acceptance is, in law, merely an offer to dedicate, and such offer does not impose any burdens or confer any rights. Until acceptance, the public acquires no rights, and is subject to no duties by reason of the dedication.
Many of the early roads established in the Territory of Utah were created simply by adjoining owners of land setting their fences back so that a passageway was created for public travel. Hall v. North Ogden City, 109 Utah 304, 166 P.2d 221 (1946). When this dedication was “accepted” by the public, a public highway came into being. Two cases of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Utah dealt with acceptance of a dedication of land for a public highway. In Burrows v. Guest, 5 Utah 91, 96, 12 P. 847, 849 (1886), the court approved the following jury instruction which used the word “accepting” in the same meaning employed in the statute here in question:
You are further instructed that it is not necessary that a dedication be made by deed or other special form; nor is any special form of acceptance of such dedication necessary to be made. It is solely a question of intent on the part of the person to dedicate, and on the part of the public to accept. If, therefore, you believe from the evidence that the road in controversy was used by the public as a road, with the knowledge of the plaintiff or his grantor, or other persons claiming the property now claimed by the plaintiff, without objection by such person so claiming the same, with intention to appropriate the same as a public road, and that Salt Lake County has expended money in repairs and improvements of the same, then you are instructed that this evidence may be received by you as tending to show a dedication to and acceptance by the public for road purposes. (Italics added.)
Again, in Wilson v. Hull, 7 Utah 90, 93, 24 P. 799, 800 (1890) the question arose as to whether the public had “accepted” a certain road. The court quoted with approval from Angelí on his work on Highways, § 157 as follows:
‘It has been said that dedication to be effectual must be accepted, and this acceptance may be either of a part or of the whole of the land appropriated. Such acceptance may undoubtedly be made by a formal act of the body charged with repairing the highway, or by any act on its part sufficiently implying its acceptance; but whether such acceptance may be made by the public generally, as evidenced by a mere use of the way, is a question upon which the decisions have not been entirely uniform.’ (Italics added.)
The court then observed that in the Utah Territory there was no statute requiring a formal acceptance by officers or agents in charge of public roads of land dedicated by owners for highways, and the court held that acceptance could be inferred under some circumstances from the action and use of the public generally without any action *471of the body charged with the repair of the public roads. Other later cases in which this Court discussed dedication and acceptance are Culmer v. Salt Lake City, 27 Utah 252, 75 P. 620 (1904); Schettler v. Lynch, 23 Utah 305, 64 P. 955 (1901); North Temple Inv. Corp. v. Salt Lake City, 26 Utah 2d 306, 489 P.2d 106 (1971).
It was in this era in the settlement of our state when common law dedication of land for public roads was commonplace that § 36-1-7 was enacted. Its genesis is 1880 Utah Laws, § 6, Chapter XXIX. So far as this writer has been able to determine, this chapter was the first legislative expression on the subject of public highways in the Territory. Other sections of Chapter XXIX defined public highways, declared certain roads to be public highways, permitted sidewalks to be built and trees to be planted thereon, gave rights-of-way for utilities, and provided for the appointment of road supervisors to maintain the highways supported by a poll tax of two days’ work of 8 hours each or $3.00 annually to be paid by every able-bodied man over 21 and under 60 years of age. The first sentence of § 6 reads the same as the first sentence of U.C.A., 1943, § 36-1-7. The second sentence of § 6 has undergone some change of wording but the intended meaning has remained the same. Section 6 as originally enacted read:
By taking1 or accepting land for a highway, the public acquire[s] only the right-of-way and incidents necessary to enjoying it and maintaining it. A transfer of land, bounded by a highway, passes the title of the person whose estate is transferred to the soil in front to the centre of the highway.
Thus, it appears that the intent of § 6 was to provide that by accepting the dedication of land for a highway, the public acquired only the right-of-way and incidents necessary to enjoying and maintaining it. The fee remained in the dedicator. He could continue to make any use of the dedicated land which was not incompatible with the public easement. Whitesides v. Green, 13 Utah 341, 44 P. 1032 (1896). If the dedicator sold his abutting property, title passed to the grantee to the center of the highway; consequently, if the highway were ever abandoned by the public, one-half of the highway would belong to the grantee or the then present owner of the abutting land and not to the original dedicator. Sowadzki v. Salt Lake County, 36 Utah 127, 104 P. 111 (1909). Brown v. Oregon Short Line R.R., 36 Utah 257, 102 P. 740 (1909).
In 1951, § 36-1-7 was not the exclusive expression by the Legislature on how the public may acquire property for highways. U.C.A., 1943, § 78-5-4 (now U.C.A., 1953, § 57-5 — 4) provided that when the owner makes a dedication by use of a map or plat, the recording thereof vests in the public the fee to the streets, alleys and public places shown thereon. This statute was enacted in 1890 (1890 Utah Laws, § 4, Chap. L.) and co-existed for over 73 years with § 36-1-7 which as we have seen was enacted 10 years earlier. We held in Oregon Short Line R.R. Co. v. Murray City, 2 Utah 2d 427, 277 P.2d 798 (1954) there was no conflict between them since the one statute deals with a dedication made by an owner who has prepared and recorded a map or plat, and the other statute codifies the common law as regards other streets. In the case of recording a formal map or plat our statutes give the public a fee interest, but in the case of a common law dedication the public acquires merely a right-of-way. See White v. Salt Lake City, 121 Utah 134, 239 P.2d 210 (1952).
There was also in 1951 another statute vesting fee title to highway land in the public. U.C.A., 1943, § 78-1-11 (U.C.A., 1953, § 57-1-12) prescribing the form of a warranty deed set out the form to be used and provided: “Such deed when executed as required by law shall have the effect of a conveyance in fee simple to the grantee, his heirs and assigns of the premises therein *472named, together with all the appurtenances, rights and privileges thereunto belonging, .... ” This statute, too, co-existed with § 36-1-7 since 1890 and apparently no one has ever before suggested in the reported cases that the word “accepting” found in § 36-1-7 incapacitated the State of Utah and its political subdivisions from receiving a fee simple title when it purchases land for highway purposes by means of a warranty deed and when it is the intent of the grant- or and grantee that such an estate pass. Section 78-1-11, like § 78-5-4, should be recognized as a later enacted exception to § 36-1-7.
It is a familiar rule of construction that courts will attempt to give two or more statutes which ostensibly conflict an interpretation that will give meaning and effect to each of them. It is also a rule that when a word of doubtful or ambiguous meaning appears in a statute it will be given a restricted interpretation. The application of both of these rules leads us to defining “accepting” as found in § 36-1-7 to mean accepting a common law dedication made by an owner. This construction gives meaning to that statute but does not impinge upon other ways that land for highways may be acquired by the public, viz., recording of plat or map, or purchase by warranty deed, in which cases fee title vests in the public.
Prior to 1935, California had a statute (Sec. 2631, Political Code) similar to our § 36-1-7. It provided:
By taking or accepting land for a highway, the public acquire[s] only the right-of-way, and the incidents necessary to enjoying and maintaining the same, subject to the regulations in this and the Civil Code provided.
In People by Dept. of Public Works v. Thompson, 43 Cal.2d 13, 271 P.2d 507 (1954) the California Supreme Court held that this statute applied to highway land acquired by deed but did not go as far as to declare that the state and its political subdivisions were without capacity to accept a fee title. In that case the California court construed the various provisions of the deed before it and determined that it was intended to convey only a right-of-way.2 Five years later in the case of City of Los Angeles v. Pacific Railway Co., 168 Cal.App.2d 224, 335 P.2d 1042 (1959) the court interpreted the Thompson decision to hold that the statute created a presumption that only a right-of-way is conveyed, but that presumption may be refuted by the language of the instrument.
In the instant case, the deed executed and delivered by the appellant and his wife in 1951 to the State Road Commission of Utah was entitled “Warranty Deed” and was in the statutory form prescribed by U.C.A., 1943, § 78-1-11. Furthermore, the deed, by its language, “conveys and warrants in fee simple to the State Road Commission of Utah.” Even under the California decisions, the presumption that a right-of-way was intended would be overcome by this clear language and a fee title would pass.
I think any statute which purports to deny the sovereign State of Utah and its political subdivisions the right to acquire the fee title to land by the statutory form of warranty deed should clearly express that intention, and such intention should not be lightly presumed by this Court.
HALL, C.J., and STEWART, J., concur in the concurring opinion of HOWE, J.

. It is not clear whether “taking” meant taking by condemnation since this writer has been unable to find any statutory enactment on the subject of eminent domain before 1884. See Title VII, Part III of the Code of Civil Procedure enacted as Chapter LV, Laws of Utah 1884.

. In a dissenting opinion written by Justice Edmonds and concurred in by Justice Traynor, they concluded that the word “accepting” meant accepting a dedication.