Hall v. Wantz, 56
| Decision Date | 10 March 1953 |
| Docket Number | No. 56,56 |
| Parties | HALL et al. v. WANTZ. |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
Balgooyen, Parmenter & Forsythe, Muskegon Heights, for appellants.
Charles A. Larnard, Muskegon, for appellee.
Before the Entire Bench.
Plaintiff are owners of lots fronting on White Lake in Muskegon county. The lake is a navigable body of water into which White River flows, and has an outlet through a channel into Lake Michigan. Defendant owns and operates a 25 by 40 foot floating raft called 'The Ark' off the shore of plaintiffs' lots, keeping it continuously anchored to the subaqueous lands of some of them, at a location 600 to 1,000 feet from plaintiffs' shore and between it and the center of the lake, in waters 40 to 50 feet deep. A house and fishing wells have been constructed on the raft and defendant permits persons to fish therefrom for a consideration paid to him.
Plaintiffs filed a bill of complaint praying for a perpetual injunction restraining defendant from mooring or anchoring the 'ark' along the shore of their properties. From decree dismissing their bill of complaint plaintiffs appeal.
The trial court's opinion, after stating that owners of property fronting on 'small inland lakes * * * own the land under the water to the middle of the lake', suggests that a different rule obtains in that regard with reference to large, navigable, inland lakes, at least at points where the waters are deep. In that vein there is quoted from Rice v. Ruddiman, 10 Mich. 125, the following:
'If the water becomes so deep in approaching the center of the lake as to render the lands under it incapable of such private or individual use, the question of ownership, beyond where it is available for such purpose, becomes as barren as the use itself; and is of no practical importance whatever.'
The quoted language is that of one of the four judges then serving on this court, each of whom wrote a separate opinion in the case. It is dicta inasmuch as the holding in the case was that ownership of land bordering on the lake carried with it ownership of the particular land under water there in controversy. It happens that in that case the waters at the point in question were shallow. There was no occasion to consider whether the rule announced might have been otherwise in the case of deep waters. As the writer of the quoted opinion stated, whether riparian ownership extended to the center of the lake was not involved in the case, the only question being whether it extended to the point in controversy which was rather near shore in shallow waters. It is apparent that the language quoted by the trial court stemmed from (1) uncertainty on the part of the then members of this court as to whether Muskegon Lake, there involved, was to be treated as being an inland lake or an arm of Lake Michigan, (2) the apparent belief, as appears from expressions of some of the judges in the case, that the riparian rights of owners on the Great Lakes and those on inland lakes are indistinguishable, and, finally, the consequent difficulty encountered by the court with the thought that it might be forced to an absurd holding concerning the nature of a riparian owner's rights to the subaqueous lands in the middle of Lake Michigan. That the riparian rights of owners on the Great Lakes and those on inland lakes are not identical has long since been established in this state. See Bauman v. Barendregt, 251 Mich. 67, 231 N.W. 70; Hilt v. Weber, 252 Mich. 198, 233 N.W. 159, 71 A.L.R. 1238; Burt v. Munger, 314 Mich. 659, 23 N.W.2d 117. Had this concept been clearly established at the time this court was considering Rice v. Ruddiman, supra, the unfortunate dicta therein undoubtedly would have been avoided. At the same time, there is considerable language in the opinions in the Rice case which indicates that the court was of the view that riparian rights on all interior waters are the same. No Michigan case has come to our attention in which it has been held that the riparian rights of an owner on an inland lake do not extend to the center merely because the waters are at that point so deep as to render the subaqueous lands incapable of private use. The holdings in the cited cases of Sterling v. Jackson, 69 Mich. 488, 37 N.W. 845, and Jones v. Lee, 77 Mich. 35, 43 N.W. 855, are definitely not of that purport.
The problem, touched upon in the Jones case, of how to determine, as between adjacent lot owners on an irregular or curved shoreline, the respective boundaries of the subaqueous lands of each, necessitating, as the court there stated, reference not only to the filum aquae but recourse as well to some other rule of proportion, is a question not before us here inasmuch as the adjacent lot owners, who undisputedly own between them the riparian rights relating to the subaqueous lands in question if anyone does, have joined as party plaintiffs in a suit against the defendant who owns no property on the lake shore or riparian rights whatsoever.
Our attention is directed to no Michigan case in which the holding, as distinguished from dicta, is that, rights of navigation assumed, the riparian rights of owners on large, navigable, inland lakes differ from those on small inland lakes. (We are mindful of the different situations presented by meandered as distinguished from nonmeandered lakes.) On the contrary, as was said in Bauman v. Barendregt, supra [251 Mich. 67, 231 N.W. 71]:
In the recent case of Burt v. Munger, supra [314 Mich. 659, 23 N.W.2d 119], we reiterated the rule 'that under the law of Michigan the riparian proprietors own to the middle of the lake.'
It is recognized that the rights of riparian owners are subject to the right in other riparian owners to use the surface of the whole lake for boating and fishing in the case of private inland lakes, Burt v. Munger, supra, or an easement of navigation in the public in navigable inland lakes, with inlets and outlets, where access may be had without trespass upon the fast land of riparian owners. Douglas v. Bergland, 216 Mich. 380, 185 N.W. 819, 20 A.L.R. 197; Collins v. Gerhardt, 237 Mich. 38, 211 N.W. 115.
The easement or right of navigation in members of the public who are not riparian owners does not include the right to anchor or attach traps to the subaqueous lands of the riparian owner or to the ice covering it for...
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