Case of the Day – Friday, December 27, 2024

Posted on December 27, 2024 by TLRoot tagged.

RUNAWAY TRAIN NEVER GOING BACK …

Mr. Elder drove his dump truck onto the Union Pacific tracks in Nephi, Utah — a town, not a soft drink — where he was promptly hit by what the Utah Supreme Court described as a “ninety-one car train.” It’s unlikely 78 cars or 23 cars or even just a set of GE diesel-electric locomotives would have caused a less deadly result.

Mr. Elder was killed, and his widow set off trying to find someone to pay for it. She sued Union Pacific and the City, suggesting that someone should have trimmed the trees near the tracks so her husband could have seen the train. The UP, which was quite adept in its own right in blaming others for grade-crossing mishaps, had a great excuse: the railroad didn’t own the offending trees to begin with.

It seems that no one ever remembered to give the Union Pacific title to its right-of-way, due to — what else? — a federal government screw-up back in the 19th century. It almost makes you wish Uncle Sam had shut down again However, the ever-resourceful Mrs. Elder argued, the Railroad had acquired all of the land under and around the tracks by prescriptive easement. She was thus in the unusual position of arguing in the lawsuit that UP was entitled to own a big piece of land on which it had been squatting for a hundred years — and was therefore liable for not keeping up the land it had never claimed to own — all at the same time.

Pretty creative lawyering! But the Utah Supreme Court held Mrs. Elder had no standing to claim the UP’s prescriptive easement on its behalf, probably because the Court suspected she didn’t have the Railroad’s best interests at heart. Imagine! As for the City, the Court agreed it had no duty under any statute to trim the trees, but it did observe the City did have a common law duty to Mr. Elder. The case was sent back to figure out whether that duty required it to trim the trees obscuring the crossing.

Elder v. Nephi City ex rel. Brough, 164 P.3d 1238 (S.Ct. Utah, 2007). Shelley Elder was killed on a Union Pacific Railroad railway track in Nephi City, Utah when the dump truck he was driving was struck by a freight train. His widow sued, contending that her husband’s death was caused by the negligence of Union Pacific Railroad and the City of Nephi.

The tracks may have been a little obscured by trees, but not quite like this.

According to Mrs. Elder, her husband would not have lost his life had a line of trees located parallel to the railroad tracks not obscured his vision of the train. The trees were situated on land owned by the City of Nephi, but Union Pacific owned the tracks and operated the train. The Railroad had no recorded property interest in the ground where the trees were located. The trial court summarily dismissed Mrs. Elder’s wrongful death claim, ruling as a matter of law that neither Nephi nor the Railroad owed a duty to Mr. Elder to ensure that the trees did not impair motorists’ ability to observe approaching trains. She appealed.

Held: The Railroad had no property interest in the trees and was under no duty to remove them. While the City of Nephi owed no statutory duty to Mr. Elder, it did owe a common-law duty to him, and the case had to be reversed on that point.

As for the Railroad’s right-of-way through Nephi, the UP route was acquired by prescriptive easement rather than by statute, and thus did not extend to land bordering tracks, including the land on which the offending trees stood. Under the Federal Townsite Act of 1867, the United States conveyed by patent to a probate judge the land within the city limits, including the railroad crossing area. Because this conveyance occurred before Congress passed the Railroad Rights of Way Acts granting railways rights-of-way through public lands, the statute could not have conveyed the right-of-way through Nephi.

Mrs. Elder claimed that the Railroad’s prescriptive easement extended not only to the railbed, however, but also to the land on which the trees stood. The Court ruled that while it wouldn’t rule that out, Mrs. Elder lacked standing to make a prescriptive easement claim on behalf of the Railroad. Standing to bring a quiet title action to perfect title is limited to parties who could acquire an interest in the property created by the court’s judgment or decree. What Mrs. Elder sought to do was to stick Union Pacific with the prescriptive easement as a way-station on the road to making the Railroad liable for her husband’s death.

As for the City of Nephi, the Court said, municipalities owe a duty of reasonable care to ordinary people, and this duty extends to travelers on their highways. The scope of a governmental entity’s common-law duty to persons using roadways under its control extends beyond the boundaries of the thoroughfare. A governmental entity does not undertake a duty to remove vegetation from private land that may obstruct the vision of motorists utilizing its roadways; nor does a private party bear a common-law duty to keep roadways free of visual obstructions caused by vegetation growing on his land.

The Court ruled that the Utah statute requiring landowners to remove vegetation “which, by obstructing the view of any operator, constitutes a traffic hazard,” did not impose a duty on the City to monitor railroad crossings for visual obstructions. U.C.A. § 41-6-19. Rather, the City’s statutory obligation to remove the trees would have been triggered by receipt of notice from the department of transportation or a local authority that an investigation had deemed the trees to be a traffic hazard. The City did not undertake any such investigation itself.

Nevertheless, the Court said, a genuine issue of material fact remained as to the allocation of duties between the City — which owned land near railroad tracks that contained irrigation ditch and trees which sprouted from the ditch embankment — and the irrigation company, which maintained irrigation ditch along the land pursuant to an irrigation easement. The common-law duty of a governmental entity to safeguard those who travel its roads may extend to visual hazards located on its land outside the bounds of the roadway itself, and the mere fact that an easement existed did not automatically assign that common-law duty to the servient estate. The issue of whether the City or the irrigation company was responsible for tree trimming, and whether the City breached its duty to the late Mr. Elder, precluded summary judgment.

– Tom Root

Case of the Day – Thursday, December 26, 2024

Posted on December 26, 2024 by TLRoot tagged.

IT WAS SMALL WHEN I PLANTED IT

It was such a safe vehicle … so it must have been the tree’s fault.

Times change and trees grow. That’s the lesson in today’s case.

Mr. Paredes was driving along I-805 in the driving rain, transporting his daughters in a superannuated Volkswagen with bald tires. He lost control of the VW and it slid down a bank, colliding with a eucalyptus tree located about 25 feet from an on-ramp. His 6- and 9-year-old daughters died in the accident, and he was badly hurt.

Normally, one would shake his or her head and observe that Mr. Paredes maybe was going too fast, or driving a junker in weather that was too bad, or perhaps engaging in risky conduct by relying on bald tires. But this being America, it had to be someone else’s fault.

Mr. Paredes blamed Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation. It was the agency’s fault because the trees were closer to the on-ramp than should be permitted by Caltrans standards, and in fact, shouldn’t have been there at all. Only problem was when the trees were planted, they complied with all standards. Even today, they were more than 30 feet from the road and 25 feet from the on-ramp. In other words, Caltrans may have set in motion the factors that caused the damage, but it didn’t create it negligently: the construction complied with all standards when built.

Under the law, the agency had to have actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition. Splitting hairs, the Court found that Caltrans knew that the trees were planted where they were planted: after all, Caltrans had planted them. But, the Court said, Caltrans didn’t have knowledge that the trees, located as they were, were dangerous.

It strikes me as maybe parsing things a little too finely. But as has been said before, hard cases make bad law. Here, the jury may have gone off on a frolic, and — notwithstanding all of the expert testimony — figured that Mr. Paredes was a little too much at fault to be entitled to much. The Court of Appeals, which is legally disposed to defend a jury verdict anyway, may have agreed.

Driving 60 mph in a beater of a car with bald tires through heavy rain? So exactly who was negligent here? Some workers who planted a tree 15 years ago or the idiot who jeopardized his most precious possession — two little girls — in his haste to get somewhere?

Mr. Paredes claimed the trees were too close to the road …

Paredes v. State, 2008 WL 384636, 2008 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1262 (Cal.App. Feb. 14, 2008). Marco Paredes was injured and his two daughters killed when Paredes lost control of his vehicle in heavy rain, after which the vehicle slid down an embankment and struck a eucalyptus tree. Paredes claimed that California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) employees created the dangerous condition by creating the slope and planting eucalyptus trees within 30 feet of the on-ramp without protecting them with guardrails, demonstrating negligence per se as well as placing Caldrons on notice of the defect.

The jury disagreed. It found that the property was in a dangerous condition at the time of the accident and was a substantial cause of Paredes’s injury and the death of his children, but it nonetheless concluded that the State did not have actual or constructive notice of the condition in sufficient time before the incident to protect against it. The jury also found the dangerous condition was not caused by a negligent or wrongful act or omission of a State employee acting within the scope of employment.

Paredes appealed.

Held: The verdict against Paredes was upheld. The Court of Appeals observed that California law held that except as provided by statute, a public entity is liable for injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property if the plaintiff establishes that the property was in a dangerous condition at the time of the injury, that the injury was proximately caused by the dangerous condition, that the dangerous condition created a reasonably foreseeable risk of the kind of injury which was incurred, and either a negligent or wrongful act or omission of an employee of the public entity within the scope of his employment created the dangerous condition, or the public entity had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition a sufficient time prior to the injury to have taken measures to protect against the dangerous condition.

The law, the Court said, plainly requires a finding that a public entity’s negligent or wrongful acts created a dangerous condition. It does not impose liability for the mere creation of a dangerous condition. In this case, the jury was instructed that the plaintiffs had to establish that negligent or wrongful conduct by a State employee acting within the scope of employment created the dangerous condition. The Court concluded that substantial evidence from State’s expert, as well as Paredes’ own experts, supported the jury’s finding that State did not act negligently or wrongfully in planting the accident trees on the slope along the accident site.

The State’s expert explained that the standard applicable at the time of the planting was Caltrans’s “clear zone principle,” which required only that trees be planted 30 feet beyond the traveled way of the I-805 mainline and 20 feet from the on-ramp. For that matter, Paredes’ expert agreed the accident tree was over 31 feet from the edge of the traveled way of the I-805, and 25 feet from the edge of the traveled way of the nearby on-ramp. Another expert explained that a fixed immovable object under the Caltrans clear zone standard was a tree having a trunk with eight-inch diameters or greater. The State’s expert testified that a guardrail would not have been required at the site of the accident tree applying standards prevalent at the time of trial.

The testimony of a single witness may be sufficient to establish substantial evidence, the Court said, and here, the jury as the exclusive judge of credibility was entitled to believe the defendant’s witnesses.

Someone should have told Mr. Paredes this …

The Court also concluded that substantial evidence supported the jury’s finding that the State did not have actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition. A public entity has actual notice of a dangerous condition if it had actual knowledge of the existence of the condition and knew or should have known of its dangerous character. A public entity has constructive notice of a dangerous condition only if the plaintiff establishes that the condition had existed for such a period of time and was of such an obvious nature that the public entity, in the exercise of due care, should have discovered the condition and its dangerous character.

Here, State employees planted the accident tree as well as other trees on the embankment. But the Court refused to fault the jury’s finding that the public property was in a dangerous condition at the time of the accident required it to also find the State had notice of that condition. On the evidence here, the jury could have concluded that the planting of the young eucalyptus tree on the embankment was not dangerous in 1979 or 1980 when that project was completed but became dangerous only when its trunk grew to a larger diameter. Thus, while State may have had notice of the physical condition it had created — the presence of trees on the slope — the jury was entitled to conclude it did not have notice that the condition was dangerous. Substantial evidence supported such a conclusion, the Court held.

– Tom Root

Case of the Day – Monday, December 23, 2024

Posted on December 23, 2024 by TLRoot tagged.

EVERYONE KNOWS IT’S WINDY

We’re heading into the teeth of the winter storm season, with The Weather Channel continuing its silly practice of naming foul weather systems: we “experienced” Winter Storm Anya way back on November 9th. But so far, we’re only through “Blair.”

Blair was accompanied by a lot of wind, which reminds us of the case we’re writing about today. We’re not suggesting that the case has an Association to the 1960’s hit. But it was windy one night near the musical instrument capital of the world, and many trees in Elkhart County were blown over. The county crews worked diligently through the night cleaning up the mess, but Marvin Hochstetler rode his motorcycle down a dark county road in the predawn hours, he found a tree the county hadn’t gotten to — and he found it the hard way.

As he recuperated from his injuries, Mr. Hochstetler hired a canny personal injury attorney. The problem was that the Indiana Tort Claims Act had an exemption carved out for conditions arising from inclement weather. Our intrepid cyclist’s response was two-fold: (1) this was so long after the storm (a whopping four hours) that it no longer qualified as storm damages; and (2) if the County hadn’t been negligent in maintaining roads and trees prior to the storm, the limb he hit wouldn’t have been there. He lost in the trial court, but the Court of Appeals agreed with Hochstetler.

The Indiana Supreme Court wasn’t buying, however. It upheld the trial court, finding that the unrebutted evidence told of widespread damage and hard-working repair crews through the nighttime hours. To agree with Mr. Hochstetler that the limb with which he had become intimately familiar should have been removed prior to 5 a.m. was to hold the County to too high a standard.

Hochstetler v. Elkhart County Highway Dept., 868 N.E.2d 425 (Sup.Ct. Ind., June 20, 2007). At around 1 a.m. on June 12, 2001, Elkhart County was hit by a strong storm that produced many fallen trees and limbs. The county started dispatching crews at about 1:30 as calls began coming into the highway garage. There were eventually 56 reports of fallen trees on county roads as a result of the storm.

Among these reports, received about 2 a.m., was a call about a tree down on County Road Four, north of State Road 120. It turns out that County Road Four is some seven miles long, and State Road 120 does not intersect with it. Riding his motorcycle sometime very early that morning, Marvin Hochstetler struck a tree that had fallen across County Road 4.

Hochstetler contended the erroneous report was about the tree he hit. Hochstetler sued the highway department, the county commissioners, and the county sheriff, alleging that they were negligent and careless in maintaining the county road. The county defendants moved for summary judgment on the basis of immunity under the Indiana Tort Claims Act. The trial court granted them judgment.

The Court of Appeals reversed.

The Indiana Supreme Court then heard the case.

Held: The county defendants prevailed. A provision of the Indiana Tort Claims Act provides immunity for losses resulting from temporary conditions of public thoroughfare that result from the weather. The Supreme Court held that the provision applied to county highway, sheriff’s departments and county commissioners insofar as the personal injuries went that Mr. Hochstetler claimed to have sustained when he hit a tree that had fallen on a county road.

The unrebutted evidence showed that the storm produced scores of trees and limbs down on roads, county highway crews were on the job almost immediately, and highway crews were still at work hours after the storm had passed in the middle of the night. The Court agreed that state and local governments may have tort responsibility for damages flowing from negligence, but the Tort Claims Act grants immunity for that negligence under certain specified circumstances. This was one such circumstance, the majority held.

The plaintiff tried to get around the weather exception by arguing that the weather-related hazard went on too long after the storm and that there was an issue of fact whether poor design and maintenance — not the storm — was responsible. One judge thought the plaintiff had enough of a point so as to survive summary judgment, but the majority of the five judges prevailed.

– Tom Root

Case of the Day – Friday, December 20, 2024

Posted on December 20, 2024 by TLRoot tagged.

YOU’RE A LOUSY LAWYER, DAD

Every so often, a case comes along that so warms the cockles of our hearts that we just have to share it, despite the fact that it may not be terribly relevant to tree or neighbor law. But next week is Christmas Week. Under normal circumstances, no work gets done during Christmas week because of the annual office party, shopping, wassailing, general merriment, and decompressing after a Christmas Day blowout.

We are no exception. Instead of working today, I’m are kicking back with some eggnog, enjoying today’s wonderful tale from Delaware.

The case began as a rather prosaic trespass. The homeowners, part of what is essentially a condo association, put their kids’ swingset and play gear on common land. Even after a demand was made, the family refused to remove it, so the homeowners association —a nonprofit corporation — sued the family for trespass.

Luckily for the homeowners (and we say that with a bit of irony), one of the couple was a lawyer, in a law partnership with his father. The two attorneys proceeded to turn a simple trespass case — in fact, a case which shouldn’t have happened at all, because the trespass was as plain as the nose on your face — into a legal circus, with multiple affirmative defenses and counterclaims. Perhaps the most creative defense: the homeowners claimed that the association was engaged in age discrimination, because the case dealt with a child’s playset, and children are… well, you get it, they’re young.

“But, Your Honor,” the defendant’s lawyer argued, “it was just a tiny little swingset!”

We were a bit in awe at lawyer Ramunno’s creativity and legal legerdemain, but the trial court wasn’t. Believe it or not, there are rules against too much creativity and vituperativeness — embodied in Delaware and many other states, as well as the federal system (see Fed.R.Civ.P. 11) — and here, the Chancery Court held that the Ramunnos and their attorney paterfamilias had crossed the line. What started out as a simple request to “move the playset” ended up being a judicial order to “move the playset” … and to pay over $11,000 in the plaintiff’s legal fees.

We love a happy ending.

Fairthorne Maintenance Corp. v. Ramunno, 2007 Del. Ch. LEXIS 107, 2007 WL 2214318 (Del.Ch., Jul. 20, 2007). This started out to be a simple case. Louis and Melanie Ramunno own a residence in the Fairthorne development of Wilmington, Delaware. To the rear of their residence is a portion of the 34 acres of private “open space” that is collectively owned and maintained by all of the homeowners in the Fairthorne development through a non-profit corporation known as Fairthorne Maintenance Corporation. By placing a playset, a park bench and other items on about 150 feet of the open space, the Ramunnos trespassed on common association property controlled by FMC. They resisted all demands that they remove it.

FMC sued for trespass. So far, so good. But Mr. Ramunno was a lawyer, and his partner was his father, who, according to the account by the court, was a zealous — perhaps over-zealous — advocate. The Ramunnos raised nine affirmative defenses and five counterclaims in their answer, which, they claimed, excused their conduct or required judgment in their favor. The trial court was so taken by the “apparent frivolity” of the answers and counterclaims (for example, the Ramunnos demanded that FMC pay for their playset because it didn’t provide any itself) that it threatened lawyer Ramunno with sanctions).

The Ramunnos backed off from seven of their nine defenses and all but one counterclaim. They then agreed to remove the personal property from the open space, but the parties couldn’t settle because the Ramunnos refused to pay FMC’s legal fees.

Held: The trial court found that the “simple reality of this case is that the Ramunnos have been trespassing on FMC’s land since December 2005 and have been using this litigation to stall FMC’s landscaping and other projects in order to continue to enjoy the fruits of their trespass.”

You want a lawyer who won’t clown around …

The Ramunnos argued that as homeowners in Fairthorne, they were privileged to use the open space for recreational purposes and, therefore, were permitted to place their play set there because it occupied little space and could be removed. But the Court held that the playset was large, designed to be permanent, not easily moved, and, in fact, it was never removed from the open space once placed there. Even if the Ramunnos had had some license to use the open space along with Fairthorne’s other residents, the Court said, they impermissibly exceeded that authority.

Trespass can occur despite “authority under [a] license to enter the property” because the actions taken exceed the permission given. It was no defense that the play set only occupied 150 square feet of the 34 acres of open space because there is no de minimis exception to trespass liability.

The court found that the Ramunnos had argued tangential issues designed solely to help them delay the legal consequences of the trespass. The arguments had unduly burdened the court, intentionally delayed the resolution of the underlying dispute, and purposefully wasted FMC’s resources. Thus, under Chancery Rule 11, the Court found that the Ramunnos and their counsel, Attorney Ramunno, had acted in bad faith, and the Court ordered a shift of responsibility for fees under the “bad faith” exception to the traditional American Rule. The Court specifically “address[ed] a troubling pattern of conduct engaged in by Attorney Ramunno that does not befit an officer of this court. That conduct began with an adolescent letter-writing campaign during discovery, continued with a procedurally improper and substantively baseless letter seeking the court’s recusal from this action, and culminated in the filing of a host of frivolous arguments that were made without sufficient grounding in law and fact.

The Court explained that “the attorney’s duty is one of reasonableness under the circumstances; a subjective good faith belief in the legitimacy of a claim does not alone satisfy the requirements of Rule 11. Where that obligation is not upheld, sanctions, including the imposition of the opponent’s costs, may be imposed. This is so even when frivolous claims are withdrawn.”

Based on a persistent abuse of the litigation process, the Court found that sanctions under Rule 11 were appropriate, and ordered the Ramunnos and their lawyer to pay FMC legal fees of $11,355.93.

– Tom Root

Case of the Day – Thursday, December 19, 2024

Posted on December 19, 2024 by TLRoot tagged.

WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU?

Many people find it hard to believe that until about 50 years ago or so, a citizen was largely without remedy when federal employees violated his or her Constitutional rights. Oh, sure, if the feds beat a confession out of you or take your stash of B.C. Bud without a warrant, you might get the confession suppressed or the fruits of the illegal search excluded from your trial. But this pretty much meant that only the guilty could get their Constitutional rights vindicated. For the truly innocent – like the readers of this blog – suppression seems like a pretty pale palliative.

What if you were like Webster Bivens, whose door was kicked in by drug agents who had the wrong house? In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), the Supreme Court said that when the government, its agents, its employees, or even its minions, breach a person’s Constitutional rights, a remedy must exist. (For a state/local version of this, look at Anjanette Young, the naked, frightened social worker whose door was kicked in (mistakenly it turned out) by Chicago police).

Since that time, Bivens actions have been employed (mostly without marked success) by citizens whose rights have been allegedly trampled by federal agents and employees. A lot of those citizens are not in very good positions to begin with (as you can see here at our sister blog). [And, practically speaking, Bivens is dead and buried].

But a citizen can still sue for non-monetary remedies (like injunctions). So it’s worth looking at what kind of mountain an average Joe, like rancher Charlie Robbins, has to scale to stop the Feds from running roughshod over him.

Charlie bought a ranch whose predecessor had given the federal Bureau of Land Management an easement. But the BLM knuckleheads never recorded it, so when Robbins bought the place, he took the ranch free of the easement. BLM demanded that he sign another one. He refused.

What followed was a disgraceful reign of harassment which caused one BLM official to resign, saying “[i]t has been my experience that people given authority and not being held in check and not having solid convictions will run amuck [sic] and that [is] what I saw happening.” But the BLM’s war of attrition was one of a thousand petty slights — trespasses, spurious administrative sanctions, even videotaping of his guests — and Mr. Robbins didn’t have the money or energy to litigate every one of them.

Too bad for him. The Supreme Court held that there was no Constitutional remedy for the non-stop harassment by government employees. Instead, the victim must bankrupt himself or herself by litigating the slights as they occur. It’s like suggesting that the best remedy for death by a thousand cuts is a thousand Band-Aids. To add insult to injury, the Court held that what would be extortion if inflicted on an East Side shopkeeper by the Mob is perfectly lawful if practiced by a government employee to gain an advantage for the government.

“Nice place,” BLM told Rancher Wilkie. “Can we harass you out of it, maybe?”

Wilkie v. Robbins, 551 U.S. 537 (2007). Robbins’s Wyoming guest ranch was a patchwork of land parcels intermingled with tracts belonging to other private owners, the State of Wyoming, and the federal government. The previous owner granted the United States an easement to use and maintain a road running through the ranch to federal land in return for a right-of-way to maintain a section of road running across federal land to otherwise isolated parts of the ranch. When Robbins bought the ranch, he took title free of the easement, which the Bureau had not recorded.

Robbins continued to graze cattle and run guest cattle drives under grazing permits and a Special Recreation Use Permit (SRUP) issued by the Bureau of Land Management. Upon learning that the easement was never recorded, a BLM official demanded that Robbins re-grant it, but Robbins declined. Robbins claims that after negotiations broke down, BLM employees began years of low-level harassment of him in order to force him to re-grant the BLM easement. This harassment included an unauthorized survey of the desired easement’s terrain and an illegal entry into Robbins’s lodge. In each instance, Robbins had a civil damages remedy for trespass, but he did not pursue it because the isolated trespass had caused inconsequential damages. At the same time, BLM began vigorous — perhaps unduly vigorous — enforcement actions against Robbins, including administrative claims for trespass and other land-use violations, a fine for an unauthorized road repair, and two criminal charges.

Robbins had the opportunity to contest all of the administrative charges. He fought some of the land-use and trespass citations and challenged the road repair fine as far as the Interior Board of Land Appeals, but did not seek judicial review after losing there. He exercised his right to a jury trial on the criminal complaints, and the jury acquitted him after only 30 minutes of deliberation. Although the quick verdict tended to support Robbins’ baseless-prosecution charge, the federal trial judge did not find the Government’s case thin enough to justify attorney’s fees, and Robbins appealed that ruling too late.

Extortion is ugly, no matter whether the Mob or Uncle Sam is behind it.

BLM also canceled a right-of-way given to Robbins’s predecessor in return for the Government’s unrecorded easement, a 1995 decision to reduce the Robbins’ special recreational use permit duration from five years to one, and termination of the SRUP and a grazing permit in 1999. Robbins also alleged BLM employees videotaped his ranch guests during a cattle drive, and they attempted unsuccessfully to pressure a Bureau of Indian Affairs employee to impound Robbins’s cattle. Robbins has an administrative, and ultimately a judicial, process for vindicating virtually all of these complaints. Instead, he filed a claim against the BLM employees he alleged had orchestrated and carried out the low-intensity warfare against him to pressure him into granting BLM an easement, claiming that they had violated his due process rights under color of their office, relying on Bivens v Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a Supreme Court case from the 1970s that permitted citizens to sue federal employees who had violated their constitutional rights. Robbins also claimed the employees had engaged in RICO (Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) conduct by blackmail and extortion (a so-called Hobbs Act violation) in order to obtain a new easement. The trial court threw out the suit, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it. The BLM sought review from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Held: The Supreme Court dismissed the case against the BLM employees. The Court held that a landowner did not have a private action against BLM’s employees for damages of the sort recognized under Bivens, and the alleged violations of the Hobbs Act and state blackmail statutes by BLM employees in their efforts to obtain an easement over landowner’s property for the exclusive benefit of the Government did not qualify as a predicate RICO offense.

The Court said that trying to induce someone to grant an easement for public use was a perfectly legitimate purpose, and, as a landowner, the Government had a valid interest in getting access to neighboring lands. To permit a lawsuit to redress retaliation against those who resist Government impositions on their property rights would invite claims in every sphere of legitimate governmental action affecting property interests, from negotiating tax claim settlements to enforcing OSHA regulations. The Court observed that Congress is in a far better position than a court to evaluate the impact of a new species of litigation against those who act on the public’s behalf (like Congress is going to do anything about it). At any rate, the Court said, the Hobbs Act does not apply when the federal government is the intended beneficiary of extortionate acts by government employees. given that the alleged conduct did not fit the traditional definition of extortion.

The Court found it noteworthy that Robbins had judicial and administrative remedies for all of the minor annoyances, harassments and inconveniences that he, in the aggregate, claimed merited a Constitutional rights lawsuit. However, he did not pursue many of these remedies, and those he did pursue, he often did not pursue to the end. Given that the wrongs he complained of were not without remedy, the Court was uncomfortable with trying to create a new one, especially one that it feared would spawn so much litigation.

Two justices dissented in part from the decision.

– Tom Root

Case of the Day – Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Posted on December 18, 2024 by TLRoot tagged.

TAKING THE “EASE” OUT OF EASEMENT

It started out harmlessly enough. About 65 years ago, the owner of a piece of land gave some neighbors an easement to use a gravel driveway over his property in order to get to their own houses. But time marched on, the grantor of the easement moved elsewhere, and a few conveyances later, Chris Clark and his wife owned the property over which the easement ran (the “servient estate,” we call it).

The Clarks apparently liked neither the easement nor the easement holders. Chris argued that the easement and the driveway it surrounded were in the wrong place, but that complaint seemed to just be a makeweight for his general irritation over there being an easement at all. Trees and shrubs overgrew the gravel driveway, but when the easement holders would try to trim them back, Chris and his wife would threaten them, even calling the police on one occasion. Chris erected stakes and signs marking what he thought was the proper easement, leaving a width more suitable for a rattlesnake to negotiate than a car or pickup truck. It got so bad that even the fire department complained it could not get to the easement holders’ homes in the event of fire.

You could have made it easy, Chris. Read your deed, note the easement it reserved to the dominant estate, and then just go with the flow for a change… But not you: you’re the guy who intends to take the “ease” out of easement, but all you ended up doing – several years and a lot of legal fees later – was to find yourself under a permanent injunction that left you a lot more restricted than you would have been if you had just shaken hands with your neighbors and made it easy.

You can’t spell “easement” without “e-a-s-e,” but you can spell “l-a-w-s-u-i-t” without it if you put your mind to it.

Crittenden v. Clark, 2018 Ill.App.Unpub. LEXIS 2236 (Ct. App. Illinois, Dec. 18, 2018). The Crittendens and some of their neighbors had a permanent easement over Chris Clark’s property for purposes of getting to access their residences and businesses. The easement was improved with a gravel driveway, but memories clouded over exactly where it lay. Over the years, trees and bushes encroached on part of it, even as Chris got increasingly steamed at the easement holders.

The easement holders were equally unhappy with Chris. Whenever they attempted to maintain or improve the easement by removing trees and shrubs or even fixing potholes, Chris threatened them and called the cops. Later, Chris placed signs and metal stakes inside the easement area. The distance between the signs and stakes prevented the easement holders from getting through. Additionally, it was impossible for fire, emergency, and waste removal vehicles to access their properties properly.

There had been many other arguments between the holders and Chris related to the maintenance and use of the easement. Chris even threatened to move the driveway at one point.

Finally having had enough, the Crittendens and five neighbors sued Chris for a declaratory judgment that they had an “exclusive right to reasonable maintenance of the Permanent Easement at their expense to preserve their ingress and egress without unreasonable interference” from Chris. They requested an injunction prohibiting Chris “from interfering with the full rights of ingress and egress over the Permanent Easement, including a mandatory injunction ordering Defendant to remove the existing impediments to such access.” The Crittendens demanded attorney fees.

The trial court granted the injunction, ruling that the easement was 20 feet wide and 13.5 feet tall. Inside the easement area, Chris was prohibited from “inserting any object that would restrict or impede the use of the drive portion of the easement” by the easement holders. The injunction gave Chris until November 30, 2016, to trim the trees and remove any impediments, after which the easement holders could remove trees, shrubs and other impediments that interfered with the easement.

Chris appealed.

Held: The permanent injunction was affirmed.

Chris argued that the trial court erroneously granted a permanent injunction. He said the court should have simply affirmed “the existence of the Subject Easement as platted,” which he claimed should just be a 10-12 foot-wide gravel driveway rather than allowing the Crittendens to improve the easement with a wider drive. Chris argued that the court materially altered the easement, placed a greater burden on his servient estate, interfered with his use and enjoyment of the land, and exposed him to liability to the electric utility because the wider easement purportedly invaded the utility’s easement. Chris argued the easement holders suffered no irreparable harm and the equities did not favor their position.

The Crittendens cited trial evidence supporting the court’s finding that the defendant unreasonably interfered with their rights under the easements.

An easement is a right or privilege in the real estate of another. The Crittendens and their neighbors, the Court said, as the owners of the dominant estates are entitled to the “necessary use of the easements.” This means such use as is “reasonably necessary for full enjoyment of the premises,” including the right to maintain the easement. Easement holders may not, however, for the mere sake of convenience, “materially alter the easements so as to place a greater burden on the servient estate or interfere with the use and enjoyment of the servient estate by its owner.”

Chris, the Court said, as the owner of the servient estate may use his property for any purpose that is consistent with the easement holders’ use of the easement, provided Chris’s use does not materially interfere with or obstruct the use of the land as a right of way. The reasonableness of the use of an easement presents a question of fact that depends on the circumstances of the case.

Here, the Court ruled, the trial judge’s findings were supported by the evidence, and the injunction was not an abuse of discretion. Chris insisted the easement was only the existing 10-12’ wide drive, but the evidence showed the easement area is about twice that width. The rule is that the owner of a right of way for ingress and egress has the right to use the full width of the area or strip having definite boundaries, unhampered by obstructions.

This case depended a lot on witness credibility, and Chris’s habit of preventing the Crittendens from maintaining the drive, placing delineators and signs along the drive that made it impossible for two cars to use it at the same time, and planting lilacs within the easement area, did not help his case. The Court of Appeals held that “instead of altering the parties’ rights and obligations with respect to the easements, it is apparent that the trial court merely intended to allow plaintiffs to restore the drive to something approximating what it believed were the dimensions prior to the mid-2000s. It seems that the court also had safety concerns in mind.” The width the trial court allowed for the easement comported with a fire chief’s testimony about the requirements for this drive as a fire apparatus access road.

The Court dismissed Chris’s fear that he might encounter problems with ComEd if the width of the drive was changed, noting that the Crittendens’ easement predated ComEd’s utility easement, and ComEd’s own evidence showed that there was no clearance issue.

– Tom Root

Case of the Day – Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Posted on December 17, 2024 by TLRoot tagged.

DUMB AND DUMBER

What do you call a guy who volunteered to help his father-in-law cut down a tree and who witnessed first-hand the risk that a branch would bounce back and endanger the workers, but then went ahead and clobbered himself by – guess what – letting a branch bounce back and hit him?

So what do you call a guy who breaks both wrists doing that, and then sues his father-in-law?

This case illustrates the various rungs of the guest ladder that a person standing in your front yard might occupy. The bottom rung, of course, is a slimy trespasser. The top would be the owner. In between are a business invitee, a social invitee and a licensee.

Dumber thought he could promote himself to the status of licensee as though he were an employee of his father-in-law (who must have been a tolerant soul to let his daughter marry this guy). The Arkansas Supreme Court knocked him down a few rungs but undoubtedly made him feel better by explaining that the rung did not matter. The very patient father-in-law had not just warned him of the danger, but he had shown him the danger and how to ensure it did not come to pass.

Some people simply won’t learn.

Young v. Paxton, 316 Ark. 655, 873 S.W.2d 546 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 1994). Don Young brought a negligence action against his father-in-law, Gerald Paxton, for injuries that he sustained on Gerald’s land as a result of trimming limbs from a tree. Gerald successfully moved for summary judgment. Don appealed, arguing that material issues of fact remained to be decided, including whether he held the status of a licensee or invitee on Gerald’s property, and whether Gerald’s negligence was the proximate cause of his injuries.

On a fine June Saturday, Don walked over to his father-in-law’s house in Saline County. There he found Gerald trimming the limb of a hardwood tree with a chainsaw while standing on a 20-foot extension ladder. The tree was over 15 feet tall with limbs drooping to the ground. Gerald had previously cut three or four limbs down.

The ladder Gerald was using rested against the limb which he was attempting to trim. As he began to cut the limb which the ladder was leaning against, the limb began to rise as the weight from the severed part fell away. Gerald asked Don to get a rope from his shop. Don located a rope and returned to the tree, and at Gerald’s request, he threw him the rope.

Gerald then wrapped the rope around the limb. Don held the rope while standing on the ground to prevent it from “bucking” and dislodging the ladder when the cut part of the limb fell away. As Don held the limb securely with the rope, Gerald cut the end of the limb and climbed down the ladder.

Gerald then showed Don where to place the ladder in order to cut another limb. The ladder was placed against the designated limb, and Don climbed up with the chainsaw and proceeded to cut it. This occurred five minutes after Gerald cut the limb with Don’s help. When the weight of the cut part fell away, the limb rose and the ladder lost its support, causing Don to fall. Because of the fall, Don badly hurt both wrists.

Don sued Gerald for $25,000 in damages, alleging that Don was a licensee on Gerald’s property and that his injuries were proximately caused by Gerald’s failure to supply proper tools to use to perform the task that he asked Don to perform; failure to properly supervise the cutting; and failure to secure the limb.

Gerald filed for summary judgment, arguing that Don had admitted that he was a licensee on Gerald’s property and that there was no proof that Gerald had violated any duty owed Don by acting willfully or wantonly towards him. Gerald argued that Don knew or should have known the dangers posed by cutting branches from the tree. In the alternative, the motion stated that as a matter of law, Don had failed to present any proof that Gerald’s conduct proximately caused his injury.

Don then filed an amended complaint, alleging that Don came onto Gerald’s property at Gerald’s express or implied invitation and acted for the parties’ mutual benefit by cutting the branches. Don further alleged that as an invitee Gerald failed to use ordinary care to avoid injury to him because Gerald knew or reasonably should have known that danger existed.

The trial court granted Gerald’s motion for summary judgment, and Don appealed.

Held: Don will collect not a dime.

The Court noted that an invitee may be a public invitee or a business invitee. A business visitor is one who enters or remains on land for a purpose connected with the business dealings of the owner. A public invitee is invited to enter or remain on land as a member of the public for a purpose for which the land is held open to the public.

However, one who goes upon the premises of another with the consent of the owner for his own purposes and not for the mutual benefit of himself and the owner is not an invitee but a licensee. The Supreme Court declined to extend the invitee status to persons on the premises of another primarily for social reasons.

The law of negligence requires as essential elements that a plaintiff show that a duty was owed and that the duty was breached. A property owner owes his or her licensee the duty to refrain from causing the licensee injury by willful or wanton conduct, and as well owes a duty to warn of hidden dangers or risks. To constitute willful or wanton conduct, there must be a deliberate intention to harm or utter indifference to, or conscious disregard of, the safety of others.

But, the Court ruled, the duty to warn does not extend to obvious dangers or risks that the licensee should have been expected to recognize. Indeed, there is no obligation to protect the invitee against dangers that are known to him, or which are so apparent that he may reasonably be expected to discover them and be fully able to look out for himself.

The Court said an invitee may be a public invitee or a business invitee; a business visitor is one who enters or remains on land for a purpose connected with the business dealings of the owner, while a public invitee is invited to enter or remain on land as a member of the public for a purpose for which the land is held open to the public. However, one who goes upon the premises of another with the consent of the owner for his own purposes and not for the mutual benefit of himself and the owner is not an invitee but a licensee; invitee status has not been extended to persons on the premises of another primarily for social reasons.

Where there was no evidence that Don was invited onto the property, he was not visiting his father-in-law for any stated business purpose and expected no pay for his assistance, no reasonable jury could have found otherwise, and, thus, no material issue of fact existed on this point. What’s more, the Court found, there was no evidence that Gerald acted willfully or wantonly to cause Don any injury. In fact, the evidence showed that Gerald advised Don that the limb would have a tendency to rise as the weight from a severed branch fell away, and Don had even seen it happen a few minutes before when he helped Gerald when faced with the same risk. Even if Don had not known of the risk when he arrived, the court said, that risk was brought to his full attention before the accident.

It is a landowner’s duty to use ordinary care to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition for an invitee, the Court said, but that duty usually is satisfied when the danger is either known or obvious to the invitee. There is no obligation to protect an invitee against dangers that are known to him, or which are so apparent that he may reasonably be expected to discover them and be fully able to look out for himself.

So, the Court concluded that regardless of Don’s status as a licensee or invitee, Gerald did not breach the duty of care owed. He perpetrated no willful or wanton injuries on Don, who was well aware of the danger involved in the limb cutting.

Because breach of a duty owed is an essential element in a cause of action for negligence, and that element was lacking, Gerald was fully entitled to summary judgment.

– Tom Root