Lambright v. Trahan

322 S.W.3d 424, 2010 WL 3431648
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided September 21, 2010·No. 06-10-00026-CV·Published·Cited by 37 cases

Opinion

OPINION

Opinion by

Justice MOSELEY.

I. BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

J.D. Stanley and wife, Inez D. Stanley, were the owners of a certain tract of land in San Augustine County, Texas, located on the shores of Sam Rayburn Reservoir. 1

By two deeds (each dated March 1, 1976), the Stanleys made conveyances from their tract.

In the first of these deeds, the Stanleys conveyed Marvin C. Goates and wife, Etta Lou Talbert Goates, and “the General Public” four contiguous easements for the purpose of “the free and uninterrupted use, liberty, privilege and easement of passing in and along certain roads and ways.” These easements were described in this deed by metes and bounds in separate descriptions as Road No. 1, Road No. 2, Road No. 3, and Road No. 4. The deed went further to recite that there was conveyed “free ingress, egress, regress to and for the said MARVIN C. GOATES and wife, ETTA LOU TALBERT GOATES, their heirs and assigns and the GENERAL PUBLIC, as may be necessary or convenient at all times and seasons ... in common with us.” Except for Road No. 3, each of the descriptions called for road easements which were forty feet in width; Road No. 3 was described as being only twenty feet wide. The western terminus of Road No. 1 was a public roadway; it crossed the tract owned by the Stanleys in an easterly/westerly direction and terminated at the Sam Rayburn Reservoir. The other described Roads connected to Road No. 1 (Road No. 1 providing the sole access to the public roadway system), Road No. 2 projecting north from it, and Road No. 3 and No. 4 projecting south from it. Reference to this deed hereafter is sometimes called the “express grant.”

The second deed was from the Stanleys to the Goateses of two parcels of land, the conveyance being made “specifically subject to the right-of-way and road easements” described in the express grant. The tracts conveyed to the Goateses did not abut any public roadway and the access to the tracts conveyed to them from the public road system was dependent on the easements conveyed by the express grant.

According to the plat shown as Plaintiffs Exhibit No. 11, at the time the con *427 troversy arose, all of the parties to the lawsuit were the sole owners of parcels carved from the tract originally owned by the Stanleys at the time of the two conveyances mentioned above. Allen Paul Tra-han and wife, Charlene C. Trahan, and Charles M. Chambers and wife, Lois J. Chambers, became the owners of most of the property which was crossed by Road No. 1 and Road No. 4; Road No. 2 branched off northerly from Road No. 1 and was surrounded on both sides by and terminated on property belonging to the Chamberses. Ardly J. Choate 2 became the successor in title to the Goateses as to the tracts described in the second deed above and to another smaller tract contiguous to it. Lloyd Lambright and wife, Elaine Lambright, D.G. Foote, Minor Longnion and wife, Nita Longnion, and Chris N. Murphy and wife, Maria A. Murphy, became the owners of the remaining parcels of land which had been carved from the residue of the original Stanley tract; each of these parcels abutted (or were crossed by) Road No. 3.

In 1995, the Trahans, the Chamberses, the Stanleys, and Bennie Joe Whitten and wife, Frances Whitten, executed an instrument entitled “Disclaimer of Easement Rights” in which all rights of way or easements over and across a portion of a 7.90-acre tract owned by the Trahans (this tract being a portion of the property subjected to the Road No. 1 and Road No. 4 easements created in the instrument mentioned above) were disavowed and quit-claimed. However, this disclaimer specifically excluded any impact on the four roadways described in the express grant. There is nothing in the evidence to reflect what interest each of these parties had in claims to the property as of the date of the signing of this instrument.

Hereafter, the Trahans and the Cham-berses are referred to jointly simply as “the Trahans” and the other owners of tracts carved from the original Stanley tract are referred to collectively as “the Lambrights.”

The Trahans became convinced that the public held no valid claim to any of the roads mentioned in the express grant except for the portions thereof which had actually been used as roadbeds. Apparently based upon this conviction, they fenced all of Road No. 4 and all portions of Road No. 1 which were not actually consumed by roadbeds (this being determined by them to be a twenty-foot-wide thoroughfare).

After the Trahans erected fences along, and on parts of, Road No. 1 which restricted the width of the roadway to no more than the actual roadbed (about twenty feet) and erected gates that allegedly blocked access to one or more of the other roads, the Lambrights filed a suit for declaratory judgment in which they sought a judicial declaration that Road' Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 were valid easements for the benefit of themselves and the general public which, among other things, could not be gated or blocked. This petition also specifically requested a determination that the “Disclaimer of Easement Rights” executed in 1995 did not have the effect of depriving them or the public of easement rights.

The Trahans filed a general denial and a counterclaim for declaratory judgment. In their counterclaim, the Trahans sought a judicial declaration determining: (1) that *428 none of the four roads are public roads; (2) that because the Lambrights and their predecessors in title had used only a twenty-foot-wide portion of Road No. 1, the portion not actually used for roadway purposes had been abandoned; and (3) that Road No. 2 and a part of Road No. 1 had been abandoned.

No request for a jury having been made, the matter was submitted to the trial court as to both the facts and the law. Although no surveyor was ever called to testify, at the hearing, both parties relied heavily on a plat prepared by William Mark Birdwell, a registered professional land surveyor. This plat (Plaintiffs Exhibit No. 11) showed the boundaries of lands belonging to each of the parties to the lawsuit and the boundaries of each of the four roads as called for in the express grant, together with the location of actual roadbeds as they were then in use. The Lambrights conceded that Road No. 2 (lying solely within the boundaries of property owned by the Chamberses) was not a public roadway and should be considered neither a public nor a private easement.

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Lambright v. Trahan, 322 S.W.3d 424, 2010 WL 3431648 (Tex. Ct. App. 2010).

322 S.W.3d 424 (Lambright v. Trahan) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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