Heg v. Alldredge

• Decision Date: 22 June 2006
• Docket Number: No. 76706-8.,76706-8.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Parties: Deborah S. HEG, Petitioner, v. Ralph C. ALLDREDGE and Claudia Alldredge, husband and wife, Respondents, Estate of Lloyd O. Kalberg; John K. Sage and Shelly A. Ogden, husband and wife; Albert L. Odmark, Jr., and Nancy Ritzenthaler, husband and wife; Pope & Talbot, Inc., a Delaware corporation; Pope Resources, Inc., a Delaware corporation; Pope & Talbot, Inc., a California corporation; and Pope Resources, a Delaware limited partnership, Defendants Below.

137 P.3d 9

157 Wn.2d 154

Deborah S. HEG, Petitioner, v. Ralph C. ALLDREDGE and Claudia Alldredge, husband and wife, Respondents Estate of Lloyd O. Kalberg; John K. Sage and Shelly A. Ogden, husband and wife; Albert L. Odmark, Jr., and Nancy Ritzenthaler, husband and wife; Pope & Talbot, Inc., a Delaware corporation; Pope Resources, Inc., a Delaware corporation; Pope & Talbot, Inc., a California corporation; and Pope Resources, a Delaware limited partnership, Defendants Below.

No. 76706-8.

Supreme Court of Washington, En Banc.

Argued February 9, 2006.

Decided June 22, 2006.

Michael L. Charneski, Attorney at Law, Woodinville, for Petitioner/Appellant.

Robert D. Johns, Duana Theresa Kolouskova, Johns Monroe Mitsunaga PLLC, Bellevue, for Appellee/Respondents.

Gerald Timothy Martin, Langley, for Defendant John Sage.

SANDERS, J.

¶1 Deborah Heg filed a quiet title action against Ralph and Claudia Alldredge to clarify her legal rights under a disputed easement over land owned by the Alldredges. The trial court granted Ms. Heg summary judgment and ruled she was entitled to ingress, egress, and road use over the easement and that the Alldredges' use of the easement could not unreasonably interfere with Ms. Heg's exercise of her easement rights. The Alldredges appealed. The Court of Appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part, holding summary judgment was inappropriate because sufficient evidence existed to support a finding Ms. Heg or one of her predecessors in interest abandoned the easement and that the Alldredges had presented a viable claim of equitable estoppel. Heg v. Alldredge, 124 Wash.App. 297, 99 P.3d 914 (2004).

¶2 We hold mere nonuse of a recorded easement coupled with the use of alternate routes of ingress and egress does not, by itself, support a finding of abandonment. Because the record contains no other evidence Ms. Heg or her predecessors in interest intended to abandon the easement, she is entitled to summary judgment. We also hold equitable estoppel does not bar Ms. Heg from enforcing her easement rights because the record contains no evidence of admissions, statements, or acts by Ms. Heg inconsistent with her present claim, and accordingly, we reverse the Court of Appeals.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

¶3 The easement at issue in this case was originally granted by Pope & Talbot, Inc.,¹ in 1957 via a declaration of easement (declaration) which stated in relevant part:

This easement shall be for ingress, egress, access and road purposes.

This easement shall vest in each owner of property which abuts upon the tracts of land hereinabove described and this easement shall be an easement running with the land both as to burden and benefit as to each such abutting tract.

Clerk's Papers (CP) at 338 (Decl. of Easement, filed Jan. 11, 1957).

¶4 The declaration described the two tracts of land over which the easement was created. One, referred to in the pleadings as Pope Tract 1, is a 60-foot-wide tract running from the northwest to the southeast. The other, Pope Tract 2, is a 40-foot-wide tract connecting Pope Tract 1 to Smugglers Cove Road. Pope Tracts 1 and 2, depicted as Parcels J and K in the clerk's papers (CP at 345, 340), collectively constitute the easement area.

¶5 Ms. Heg owns two adjoining parcels of land: Parcel A bordering Smugglers Cove Road, and Parcel B, a waterfront parcel. A road across Parcel A connects Parcel B, where Ms. Heg's house is located, to Smugglers Cove Road. The Alldredges own Parcels C and D, located to the south of Ms. Heg's property. Parcel C borders Smugglers Cove Road, and Parcel D is a waterfront parcel. Parcel J, also owned by the Alldredges, extends southeast from the border of Parcels A and B, between Parcels C and D. Parcel K, Smugglers Lagoon Lane, connects Parcel J to Smugglers Cove Road.

¶6 The Alldredges purchased Parcels C and D in 1989. Before the purchase, Alldredges became aware Parcel J was not merely an easement, but was in fact a separate parcel still owned by Pope & Talbot, Inc. Alldredges completed the purchase of Parcel J in July 1989. Subsequently, between 1994 and 1998, Alldredges quitclaimed to the owners of Parcels G, H, and I, waterfront parcels adjoining Parcel J to the west, the adjacent portions of Parcel J.

¶7 Ms. Heg purchased Parcels A and B in March 1993. The statutory warranty deed executed between Heg and the seller, Donald Thomas, stated Mr. Thomas conveyed to Heg Parcels A and B, "together with an easement for ingress, egress and utilities as described in [the declaration]."² Subsequent to the purchase, Ms. Heg completed two boundary line adjustments to her property. The first adjustment enlarged Parcel B at the expense of Parcel A. Following this adjustment, Parcels A and B both continued to abut the easement. The second adjustment involved an exchange between Ms. Heg and the Alldredges, with Ms. Heg swapping a portion of Parcel B in exchange for an equal-sized portion of the easement area along with a payment of $2,000.³ As with the earlier adjustment, Parcels A and B both continued to abut the easement.

¶8 When the instant litigation commenced Ms. Heg owned Parcels A and B, the Alldredges owned Parcels C, D and J, the owners of G, H and I owned their extended⁴ parcels, and Pope and Talbot, Inc., continued to own Parcel K, consisting of Pope Tract 2 and the portion of Pope Tract 1 south of Parcel I.

¶9 In November 2001 Ms. Heg filed a complaint to quiet title to easement, requesting judgment quieting her title and rights in the easement and an order requiring the Alldredges to remove all improvements from the easement area interfering with her easement rights. The Alldredges' answer raised six affirmative defenses: (1) Ms. Heg failed to name as defendants other owners of parcels abutting Parcel J; (2) Ms. Heg's predecessors in interest abandoned any rights to the easement by developing another route for ingress and egress, and she forfeited any of her rights by improving this access road on her property; (3) any easement rights granted in the declaration were not meant to apply to Ms. Heg's property because a more direct ingress/egress road existed, and those easement rights were meant solely to benefit landowners who did not have a more direct means of ingress and egress; (4) any easement rights benefiting Ms. Heg's property had lapsed and had been lost by virtue of adverse possession, applicable statute of limitations and/or the equitable doctrine of laches; (5) Ms. Heg's misconduct in asserting her easement rights constituted unclean hands, barring her from any equitable remedies; and (6) Ms. Heg misled the Alldredges about her intention to assert easement rights in order to secure the 1998 boundary line adjustment, barring her quiet title action.

¶10 In May 2002 Ms. Heg filed a motion for summary judgment. She argued that as an owner of property abutting the easement she was entitled to judgment in her favor quieting title to the easement, and requested the court to enjoin defendants from interfering with her rights under the easement. The trial court granted summary judgment in her favor in October 2002. The trial court ruled (1) the declaration created an easement appurtenant to Parcels A and B; (2) Ms. Heg was not estopped from asserting her easement rights; (3) Ms. Heg did not abandon the easement because mere nonuse of an easement does not extinguish it; and (4) the Alldredges' balancing of hardships argument relates to specific uses of an easement, but not to an enquiry of whether an easement exists. The Alldredges appealed.

¶11 On appeal, Alldredges asserted the trial court erred by failing to recognize material issues of fact existed about whether the easement had been abandoned, whether Ms. Heg was equitably estopped from enforcing the easement, and by failing to defer the determination of the scope of the rights under the easement granted Ms. Heg until the actual use of the easement is proposed. The Court of Appeals agreed and reversed the grant of summary judgment. Relying on Barnhart v. Gold Run, Inc., 68 Wash. App. 417, 843 P.2d 545 (1993), the Court of Appeals held that nonuse of an unopened easement coupled with long term use of an alternate means of ingress and egress can support a finding of abandonment, Heg, 124 Wash.App. at 308, 99 P.3d 914, and that sufficient evidence existed for a trier of fact to determine Ms. Heg or one of her predecessors in interest abandoned the easement. Id. at 309, 99 P.3d 914. Despite rejecting the Alldredges' claims the land swap transaction estopped Ms. Heg from enforcing her easement rights because they would not have agreed to it otherwise, the court held the Alldredges presented a viable estoppel claim alleging detrimental reliance on the acts of Ms. Heg's predecessors when they selected a building site for their house. Id. at 313, 99 P.3d 914. Finally, the Court of Appeals expressly preserved the issue of relative hardship determination for future review, if and when Ms. Heg elects to build a roadway on the easement. Subsequently we granted Ms. Heg's petition for review.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶12 When reviewing a summary judgment order we evaluate the matter de novo, performing the same inquiry as the trial court. Ski Acres, Inc. v. Kittitas County, 118 Wash.2d 852, 854, 827 P.2d 1000 (1992) (citing Herron v. Tribune Publ'g Co., 108 Wash.2d 162, 169, 736 P.2d 249 (1987)). Summary judgment is appropriate if no genuine issue of material fact exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. CR 56(c). We consider the facts submitted and all reasonable inferences from those facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Wilson v. Steinbach, 98 Wash.2d 434, 437, 656 P.2d 1030 (1982) (citing Yakima Fruit & Cold Storage Co. v. Cent. Heating & Plumbing Co., 81 Wash.2d 528, 530, 503 P.2d 108 (1972)). The motion should be granted only if, from all the evidence, reasonable persons could reach but one conclusion. Morris v. McNicol, ...