Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Co. v. Northern Lumber Mills

5 Alaska 269
CourtDistrict Court, D. Alaska
DecidedApril 30, 1915
DocketNo. 1020-A
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 5 Alaska 269 (Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Co. v. Northern Lumber Mills) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Alaska primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Co. v. Northern Lumber Mills, 5 Alaska 269 (D. Alaska 1915).

Opinion

JENNINGS, District Judge.

It would serve no good purpose to review the many authorities cited by the parties to this suit as to rights of an upland owner in Alaska, for those rights have so often received consideration from the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit that it is too late to question, in this court at least, the doctrines announced by our appellate court.

Plaintiff contends that the upland owner is entitled to “wharf out,” while defendant controverts this contention. By the plaintiff the court is referred to the case of Dalton v. Hazelet, 182 Fed. 562, 105 C. C. A. 99, where our Circuit Court of Appeals sustained the right of Hazelet to wharf out; and by defendant the court is referred to the language of Judge Gilbert in McCloskey v. Pacific Coast Co., 160 Fed. 794, 87 C. C. A. 568, 22 L. R. A. (N. S.) 673, as follows: “While it had not the right to wharf out on the tidelands in front of its property”— and to other cases in which the “right to wharf out” is in general language denied.

There is no conflict between the principles enunciated in these two cases from our appellate court. It is laid down in the [271]*271case of Columbia Canning Co. v. Hampton, 161 Fed. 64, 88 C. C. A. 224, and the case of Barron v. Alexander, 206 Fed. 272, 124 C. C. A. 336, and in several other cases from the Court of Appeals, that the upland owner has the “right of access to navigable water.” Access for the upland owner to and from the navigable water does not mean necessarily access for him merely as a pedestrian, or as an equestrian, or as a teamster. It means access to or from the water in the usual way by which such access is attained and enjoyed; and that is dependent upon the purpose for which such access is desired, and upon the reasonableness of the manner in which it is proposed to make such right available. The right of access to and from the deep water is analogous to the the right of access enjoyed by an abutter upon any other highway. The latter has the right to use his land for the purposes for which he desires and for which it is susceptible. Usually the only dseful instrumentality which can approach the upland from the navigable water is one that is capable of navigating the navigable water, to wit, ships, boats, and other water craft. Those are the things which navigate the highway, and those are the things which bring to the upland that which the owner desires to use upon it, and it is by means of these that the owner leaves his land to navigate the highway. Ships are ineffective unless they proceed from one place to. another, and they cannot usually land without wharves and docks to tie to, and usually they cannot discharge their freight except by means of wharves. If it be necessary for such “navigators of the highway” to have a wharf to which to make fast in order that this right of access may be enjoyed by the upland owner, then the latter has a right to construct on the shore such a wharf as may be appropriate. He may do this, not because he has a right to erect a structure on the shore, but because he has a right of access to the deep water, and he cannot enjoy that right except by- means of a wharf. The right to build a wharf in such cases is not a major right, not an independent right, not an all-sufficient right. It is a qualified right, having no potency whatsoever except in so far as it is referable and appurtenant to, and is a part of, that other right, called the right of access. The owner of a right of access certainly has the right to make his right of access practical.

“It is a general rule that, when the use of a thing is granted, everything is granted hy which the grantee may enjoy such use. By [272]*272analogy, we may reason that the riparian owner’s right of access to the navigable waters in front of his upland comprehends, necessarily and justly, whatever is needed for the complete and innocent enjoyment of that right.” Trustees of Brookhaven v. Smith, 188 N. Y. 87, 80 N. E. 670.

And so in the case of Dalton v. Hazelet, 182 Fed. 573, 105 C. C. A. 99, our Circuit Court of Appeals held that Hazelet, although not having, and not claiming to have, any right or title to the soil below high-water mark, yet had the right to build a wharf from his upland to the deep water in order to facilitate his access to and from that deep water, using the following language:

“We think that, under the facts stated, the plaintiff is entitled to be relieved against this obstruction; that, while in a territory a grant of land bordering on or bounded by navigable waters conveys to the grantee no right or title to the shore or soil below high-water mark, nevertheless such a grantee has the right to a free and unobstructed access to such waters. 1 Farnham on Waters, 297. But how shall the littoral owner have access to navigable waters where shoal water intervenes? The Supreme Court has answered this question in Dutton v. Strong, 66 U. S. [1 Black] 23-32 [17 L. Ed. 29], where the court said: ‘Wherever the water of the shore, so to speak, is too shoal to be navigable, there is the same necessity for such obstructions as in the bays and arms of the sea, and where that necessity exists it is difficult to see any reason for denying to the adjacent owmer the right to supply it; but the right must be understood as terminating at the point of navigability, where the necessity for such erections ordinarily ceases.’ ”

In Re Union Depot Street Ry. & Transfer Co., 31 Minn. 301, 17 N. W. 629, 47 Am. Rep. 789, it is said:

“This expression, ‘to the point of navigability,’ must be understood as giving the right to the extent necessary to make the abutting property reasonably available at any ordinary stage of water for any kind of navigation for which the stream is used, and for which it is adapted. * * * It must have reference not only to an ordinarily low stage of water, but also the size and kind of vessels which navigate the stream, and the kind of business done upon it.”

There is nothing in Columbia Canning Co. v. Hampton, nor in Barron v. Alexander, nor in any other decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals to which this court’s attention has been directed, which is not in strict conformity with the doctrine announced.

[273]*273In the Columbia Canning Company Case it was neither alleged nor proven that the plaintiff’s right of access was cut off. In that case the plaintiff founded his action on an alleged right in himself to keep anybody else from erecting a structure on the tideland in front of his upland because it would interfere with a fish trap which he wanted to build on the tideland (the right to erect such fish trap not being at all referable to any right of navigation or any right of access). The complaint did not allege that the upland owner’s access was being interfered with, and the Circuit Court simply held that the complaint did not state a cause of action. In the Barron Case the lower court found as a matter of fact that the erection being made by Alexander did not interfere with any right of access inhering in Barron, and the Circuit Court of Appeals simply sustained the holding. In neither case was it held that the upland owner had not the right to wharf out in aid of his right of access.

The Right of Access is an Easement Only.

It is said in Yates v. Milwaukee, 77 U. S. (10 Wall.) 504, 19 L. Ed. 984, this right is—

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Bluebook (online)
5 Alaska 269, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/alaska-juneau-gold-mining-co-v-northern-lumber-mills-akd-1915.