http://montanauntamed.com/get-outside/article_e9fb0080-554f-5192-a993-81b08f283d43.html Hunters, anglers, hikers and horsepackers can use the Indian Creek Trail into the Lee Metcalf Wilderness Area in southwest Montana, a federal appeals court has affirmed.
A lawyer for Wonder Ranch LLC had requested in April that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturn U.S. District Court Judge Sam Haddon’s 2016 ruling that the Forest Service has a prescriptive easement across the ranch’s property.
Instead, on Thursday three of the justices issued an order affirming Haddon’s findings in a legal fight that dates back to 2014. The three-judge panel included Morgan Christen, N. Randy Smith and Richard Tallman.
“We are very pleased with the Court’s decision,” said Leanne Martin, Forest Service Northern Regional forester, in a press release. “Maintaining public access to USDA Forest Service lands is an important part of our mission. At the same time, we ask everyone who accesses Forest Service land through private property, whether an easement exists or access is granted by permission, to be respectful of the landowner’s property rights.”
The Indian Creek Trail is a popular route into the Madison Range from the west side. The trailhead is located about 23 miles southeast of Ennis.
"I hope it has some bearing on some other trails, like the Crazy Mountains" where access across public land on old forest trails is being sought, said John Gibson, vice president of the Public Land/Water Access Association.
That's not likely, said Melissa Hornbein of the Department of Justice.
"By nature all of these cases are very fact specific," she said. "With regard to other access issues, we work on all of those on a case-by-case basis."
The case arose in 2014, when Wonder Ranch LLC sued the United States under the Quiet Title Act after the United States’ filing of a “statement of interest” in the trail. Wonder Ranch claimed that the trail, which traverses its 80-acre parcel east of Cameron, was used by the public by permission of the landowner, and that no public right of access existed. The United States counter-sued, claiming that a prescriptive easement across Wonder Ranch for the public and the Forest Service to use the trail had been clearly established through many decades of stock, recreational and commercial use.
After an eight-day trial in 2016, the District Court found that, based on the historical evidence and testimony of multiple witnesses, a public easement had been established and maintained through generations of use.
Wonder Ranch’s attorney, Christopher Stonebeck of Billings, had contested Haddon’s ruling on several points before the Ninth Circuit justices. He argued that public use was not “open and notorious,” as required to establish a public prescriptive easement. But the Ninth Circuit judges said the fact that the Forest Service had maintained the trail since 1959, and that the trail regularly saw large numbers of public hikers, “provided ‘actual knowledge of the claimed right, or (is) of such a character as to raise a presumption of notice.’”
Stonebeck also asserted that use of the route was simply neighborly accommodation, “'a form of permissive use which, by custom, does not require permission at every passing.’” Again, the justices supported Haddon’s findings, noting “'the vast majority of public and (Forest Service) use of the Trail was not the product of neighborly accommodation.’”
Even though the Forest Service may not have identified the “five years of open, notorious, adverse, continuous and uninterrupted use” to fulfill the statutory period for a prescriptive easement as required by law, the justices ruled that narrowly defining the period wasn’t necessary under Montana law.
Finally, the court favored Haddon’s ruling that the Forest Service’s attempts to purchase an easement was not an implied admission it had no easement, but that rather it was “not inconsistent with the existence of a public prescriptive easement.”
Stonebeck had also argued that the Federal Land Policy and Management Act prohibited the Forest Service from acquiring an easement. Since Haddon had ruled a prescriptive easement existed before the establishment of FLPMA in 1976, and the Ninth Circuit justices were upholding Haddon’s ruling, the justices did not even “address the merits of the FLPMA argument.”
Stonebeck had also sought attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act, which the court denied.
Assistant U.S. attorney Mark Smith, of Billings, represented the Forest Service before the Court of Appeals.
The Wonder Ranch gets its name from the people who homesteaded the acreage in the early 1930s, Helen and Denny Wonder. The property was eventually bought in 1968 by Texas oil industry entrepreneur William Hudson. His heirs formed the Limited Liability Corporation that owns the ranch and who sued the Forest Service.
