Home/Court of Special Appeals of Maryland/Rayne v. Coulbourne

Rayne v. Coulbourne

500 A.2d 665, 65 Md. App. 351, 1985 Md. App. LEXIS 485
CourtCourt of Special Appeals of Maryland
DecidedDecember 4, 1985
Docket2, September Term, 1985
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 500 A.2d 665 (Rayne v. Coulbourne) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Special Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Rayne v. Coulbourne, 500 A.2d 665, 65 Md. App. 351, 1985 Md. App. LEXIS 485 (Md. Ct. App. 1985).

Opinion

ALPERT, Judge.

It has been said that “time and tide wait for no man.” In this “riparian rights” case, man has awaited the effect of the tide, i.e., man has waited sixteen years for a decision as to the legal effect that tide has on the boundaries of his real property. In October, 1969, Dale and Hilda Rayne, appellants, filed suit in the Circuit Court for Wicomico County against Franklin and Frances Coulbourne, Caroline Blades, H. Gray and Shirley Reeves, Larmar Corporation, John and Althea Willin, and the State of Maryland, seeking an equitable share of an artificially created peninsula that basically cut off their former frontage on the Wicomico River. The matter was eventually heard by Judge Richard M. Pollitt on a Stipulation of Facts which in relevant part stated:

Dale Randolph Rayne and Hilda Taylor Rayne, his wife (“Rayne”) and Franklin P. Coulbourne and Frances Anne Coulbourne, his wife (“Coulbourne”) are the owners of adjoining tracts of land on the northerly side of Riverside Drive in Camden Election District of Wicomico County, Maryland____
In the fall of 1951 the Army Corps of Engineers let a contract and did in fact dredge the Wicomico River and by the deposit of spoils from the dredging created a peninsula approximately eight (8) acres in size located between the original fastland (“fastland”) of Coulbourne, Rayne, Caroline Blades and the State of Maryland and the main body of the Wicomico River, separated from the fastland by tidal flats and marsh in which area the tide did then and does now ebb and flow. The land was *354 created by the erection of a dike (berm) which was attached at one end of the northeasterly portion of the Coulbourne fastland, extending therefrom southwesterly to the rear of the fastland owned by Rayne, Blades and the State of Maryland, then circling and reversing itself and attaching at the other end to land to the east of the Coulbourne fastland then belonging to Dr. John Willin.

The following diagram, which was annexed as an exhibit to the Stipulation, better illustrates the location of the properties in question.

*355

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
500 A.2d 665, 65 Md. App. 351, 1985 Md. App. LEXIS 485, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rayne-v-coulbourne-mdctspecapp-1985.