Citizens for Open Access to Sand and Tide, Inc. v. Seadrift Ass'n

• Decision Date: 14 January 1998
• Docket Number: No. A077421,A077421
• Citation: 60 Cal.App.4th 1053,71 Cal.Rptr.2d 77
• Court: California Court of Appeals
• Parties: , 98 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 388, 98 Daily Journal D.A.R. 497 CITIZENS FOR OPEN ACCESS TO SAND AND TIDE, INC., Plaintiff and Appellant, v. SEADRIFT ASSOCIATION et al., Defendants and Respondents.

Page 77

71 Cal.Rptr.2d 77

60 Cal.App.4th 1053, 98 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 388,

98 Daily Journal D.A.R. 497

CITIZENS FOR OPEN ACCESS TO SAND AND TIDE, INC., Plaintiff and Appellant, v. SEADRIFT ASSOCIATION et al., Defendants and Respondents.

No. A077421.

Court of Appeal, First District, Division 1, California.

Jan. 14, 1998.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 11, 1998.

Review Denied March 25, 1998. ^*

Dotty E. LeMieux, Bolinas, Charles J. Post, Sacramento, Roger Hurt, Stinson, Larry P. Manning, for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Edgar B. Washburn, Anne E. Mudge, Washburn, Briscoe & McCarthy, San Francisco, Peter B. Sandmann, Tesler, Sandmann & Fishman, Mill Valley, for Defendants and Respondents.

SWAGER, Associate Justice.

The trial court sustained respondents' demurrer to the present action for implied dedication of a public recreational easement and declaratory and injunctive relief without leave to amend. We conclude that appellant's action is barred by a settlement incorporated into judgments entered in prior suits, and affirm the judgment.

STATEMENT OF FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Throughout this century a tide of controversy and litigation over the competing rights of private ownership and public access has swept over the sands of the Bolinas Sandspit, and more specifically a northwesterly part of it known as the Seadrift Sandspit. The matter now before us represents the latest wave of litigation to lap these shores.

In February of 1950, title to the Seadrift property between the ordinary high water mark of the Pacific Ocean--known as the "Atherton Line"--and the low water mark of the Bolinas Lagoon was quieted in the William Kent Estate Company, and soon thereafter development in the area commenced. Seadrift subsequently became a residential subdivision of over 300 parcels. Respondent Seadrift Association was organized as the fee title owner of beach-front property in the Seadrift subdivision. The remaining respondents are the individual owners of the lots within the Seadrift Subdivision and members of the Association which represents them.

After obtaining the quiet title decree in 1950, the William Kent Estate Company constructed a fence perpendicular to the Atherton Line to exclude the public from the private Seadrift property. A suit initiated by the State of California in 1960 to mandate removal of the fence by William Kent Estate Company culminated more than a decade later in the voluntary withdrawal of a portion of the fence. Thus, the public continued to use the beach and lagoon for recreational activities.

The current dispute traces its genesis to 1983, when respondents obtained an emergency permit from the California Coastal Commission (hereafter the "CCC") to construct a rock revetment seawall to protect homes in the Seadrift subdivision from storm damage. A permanent permit for installation and maintenance of the seawall was requested from Marin County (hereafter the County), the local governmental authority for coastal development under the California Coastal Act of 1976(Pub. Resources Code, § 30000 et seq.) (Coastal Act). The County proposed to issue the permanent permit upon the condition that respondents dedicate to the public the beach on the Seadrift Sandspit, but on the advice of counsel, the County eventually approved the permit without any dedication requirements.

The Chair and Vice-Chair of the CCC and a Seadrift property owner appealed the County's decision to issue a permanent permit without dedication conditions or public access provisions to the CCC in 1987. Concurrently, the CCC and the Attorney General investigated the prescriptive rights of the public to recreational use of the Seadrift beach, and the extent to which the seawall interfered with those rights. The CCC concluded "that there are public prescriptive rights on the sandy beach," and professed an intent to "pursue that" on behalf of the public if necessary.

The CCC, joined by the State Lands Commission (hereafter the "SLC") and the Attorney General, also asserted that the entire Bolinas Sandspit remained public domain owned by the federal government, rather than by respondents as private property. On behalf of the State of California, an administrative action was therefore instituted before the Bureau of Land Management (hereafter the "BLM"). On March 6, 1989, after a hearing at which respondents, their title companies, and the state agencies appeared, the BLM determined that under the doctrine of "administrative finality" the federal government had no right to pursue an ownership interest in the Bolinas Sandspit. The BLM decision was appealed by the Attorney General, the CCC and the SLC on behalf of the public to the Interior Board of Land Appeals, without success, and then by an action for judicial review filed in federal court on May 15, 1992 (hereafter the federal court action). ¹ (California Coastal Commission v. United States Department of Interior (E.D.Cal.1992, No. Civ. S-92-072 GEB GGH).)

Meanwhile, on April 3, 1992, a group of Seadrift property owners filed a petition for writ of mandate and complaint to quiet title in Marin County Superior Court ² (hereafter the Kelly action), in which they asserted that the CCC lacked jurisdiction to determine or proclaim any "implied dedication or prescriptive rights over the beach-front lots in the Seadrift Subdivisions ..." on the part of the public. A subsequent order in the Kelly action stayed any further proceedings in that case or the CCC administrative appeal of the seawall permit application until 90 days after final resolution of the federal court action.

A comprehensive settlement of the two pending suits and the conflicting property rights was proposed to respondents by the CCC and the SLC in February of 1992, to resolve all public claims of ownership or use of the Bolinas Sandspit and "finally bring to an end" the dispute. Negotiations proceeded, and between December of 1993 and March of 1994, the CCC conducted settlement hearings. Appellant objected to the settlement proffered by the CCC staff as contrary to the Marin County Local Coastal Program promulgated under the authority of the Coastal Act, which designated the beach "for low-intensity recreational uses." Appellant argued that the historic public use of the Seadrift Sandspit required a recreational prescriptive easement greater in size, time of use and permitted activities than specified in the proposed agreement. Appellant suggested issuance of a permanent permit for the seawall "only if a public recreational easement" consistent with the Local Coastal Program was imposed as a condition of approval.

On March 16, 1994, the CCC approved the proposed Settlement Agreement which had been revised to be consistent with the "historical use of the beach" revealed during the hearing process and the policies of the Local Coastal program. The parties to the Settlement Agreement were those named in the Kelly and federal court actions, including the Department of the Interior, acting for the United States of America, the CCC, SLC, and the California Attorney General, all acting on behalf of the State of California, the County of Marin, the Seadrift Association, the individual record owners of lots and parcels in the Seadrift subdivisions, and their title insurance companies. The expressed objective of the Settlement Agreement was final resolution of all existing disputes between the parties as to the "nature and extent of public right, title and interest in and to the Bolinas Sandspit" raised in the Kelly action, the federal court action, and the administrative appeal before the CCC reviewing the approval by Marin County of respondents' permit for installation of the seawall.

The Settlement Agreement required the Seadrift Association and at least 75 percent of the lot owners of the Seadrift Sandspit beach-front lots to grant easements to the public, to be recorded in Marin County, of a specified area for "low intensity, passive recreation uses," excluding "the period from 10:00 ... at night until one hour before sunrise." In exchange, the Settlement Agreement provided that the claims of public ownership and use of the Seadrift Sandspit asserted in the Kelly and federal court actions would be relinquished in accordance with stipulated judgments, the permit authorizing installation and maintenance of the seawall would be placed in escrow, all other offers of dedication of easement rights to the public would be extinguished, and the parties would agree to refrain from challenging the Settlement Agreement or encouraging "any third party" to do so. Further, any lot owner who failed to execute the Settlement Agreement or convey an easement as directed by it was "deemed to have waived and relinquished any right and entitlement to the benefits" of the Agreement. Finally, the Settlement Agreement provided for judicial confirmation of its terms by judgment entered in the Kelly action.

On May 13, 1994, appellant filed a complaint in intervention in the Kelly action, and a separate petition for writ of mandate against the CCC in Marin County Superior Court. ³ The complaint in intervention alleged an interest in the Kelly action to "assert a public recreational easement over the Bolinas Sandspit" adverse to the plaintiffs and "different from" the CCC, which had declined "to assert a public recreational easement by implied dedication." The petition for writ of mandate directly challenged both the Settlement Agreement, on the ground that it improperly restricts historic public recreational use of the beach, and the approval by the CCC of the permit to construct the seawall based upon the Settlement Agreement, as arbitrary, capricious, unsupported by substantial evidence, and contrary to the law. The motion to intervene was denied, without prejudice to appellant's right to "establish in a separate action" that an easement exists by virtue of "implied dedication." Appellant voluntarily dismissed with prejudice the action...