Sopatyk v. Lemhi Cnty.
| Decision Date | 09 November 2011 |
| Docket Number | No. 37186.,37186. |
| Citation | 151 Idaho 809,264 P.3d 916 |
| Court | Idaho Supreme Court |
| Parties | Brian P. SOPATYK, Petitioner–Appellant–Cross Respondent, v. LEMHI COUNTY, Lemhi County Board Of Commissioners, Lemhi County Clerk–Recorder, and Does 1–5, in their official and individual capacities, Respondents–Cross Appellants. |
Saetrum Law Offices, Boise, for Appellant. Rodney R. Saetrum argued.
Lemhi County Prosecuting Attorney, Salmon, and Givens Pursley, LLP, Boise, for Respondents. Christopher H. Meyer argued.
Brian Sopatyk petitions for judicial review of the Lemhi County Board of Commissioners decision to validate Anderson Creek Road, which runs the length of his property. He contends the road never became public and, if so, was abandoned. He also maintains that the validation was an unconstitutional taking, that it was error for the road easement to be validated at fifty-feet wide, that one of the commissioners was biased against him, that the road illegally invades federal public lands, and that the Board of Commissioners failed to explain why the validation is in the public interest. This Court affirms the validation decision because the road became public by legislative declaration in the late 1800s and was never abandoned.
Gibbonsville, Idaho, is located in Lemhi County, where the central portion of the state juts into Montana. The region was originally public federal land. In the 1860s and 1870s, prospectors discovered gold around what later became Gibbonsville, causing pioneers to begin flooding the area in 1876. They settled Gibbonsville where Anderson Creek runs south into Dahlonega Creek before Dahlonega flows west out of town. Two years later, in 1878, mineral prospectors formed a mining district and a committee to draw up and file a plat for the Gibbonsville townsite with the district. At some point, a road providing access to various mining claims had been constructed running north-south, parallel to Anderson Creek, as the miners' plat and an accompanying description identify a street running north up along Anderson Creek as Main Street. Today, the road is known as Anderson Creek Road ("ACR"). Over the years, the public was generally able to use the road, but it has deteriorated and is now overgrown with brush in some places.
Among the mineral claims that early prospectors filed were two long and narrow gold placers along Anderson Creek, one in 1879 and the other in 1881.1 These placers were patented as the Anderson Creek Consolidated Placers Nos. 1 and 2 ("the Anderson Placers") in 1897.2 Brian Sopatyk, Appellant, purchased the Anderson Placers in pieces between 1994 and 1996, and now owns an area of over sixty-six acres. Except for certain spots where it drifts partially into the neighboring Salmon National Forest, ACR runs most of the length of Sopatyk's property.
In 1998, the Lemhi County Board of Commissioners ("the Board") validated ACR as a public road. Sopatyk then filed a lawsuit against the County seeking a writ of prohibition. The district court ordered another hearing before the Board, which occurred in 2004. The Board unanimously validated ACR, finding that the road had been made public by territorial legislative declaration in 1881, an order of the County Commissioners in 1892, prescription, common law dedication, and under R.S. 2477, a federal statute allowing local and state governments to establish public roads on federal lands. After the Board's decision, Sopatyk requested and was granted another hearing before the Board in part to present evidence of bias on the part of Commissioner Joseph Proksch, who was Chairman at the time of the 2004 hearing and served as the hearing officer. After convening a third time to publicly deliberate the matter, this time without Proksch, the Board unanimously affirmed its decision and found that Commissioner Proksch was not biased.
Sopatyk petitioned for judicial review in the case,3 and the district court affirmed on the grounds that ACR was legislatively declared a public road in 1881 and that there had been a common law dedication when the miners committee filed a plat with the Mining District in 1878. Sopatyk appealed to this Court, where he argues that the road has not become public under any of the methods described in the Board's order and that, even if the road did become public, it has since been passively abandoned. He also contends that validating the road was an unconstitutional taking, it illegally intrudes on Forest Service land, Commissioner Proksch was biased against him, and the Board did not properly examine whether validating ACR was in the public interest.
On appeal from a validation decision in which the district court acted in an appellate capacity, this Court independently reviews the County record. Homestead Farms, Inc. v. Bd. of Comm'rs, 141 Idaho 855, 858, 119 P.3d 630, 633 (2005). Idaho Code section 40–208 governs judicial review of validation proceedings. Floyd v. Bd. of Comm'rs, 131 Idaho 234, 238, 953 P.2d 984, 988 (1998). It provides that this Court may reverse or modify the County's decision if the appellant's substantial rights have been prejudiced because the County's decisions are:
I.C. § 40–208(7). This Court will not substitute its judgment for that of the County as to the weight of the evidence on questions of fact. Id. It will uphold the County's findings unless they are unsupported by substantial competent evidence. State Dep't of Health & Welfare v. Roe, 139 Idaho 18, 21, 72 P.3d 858, 861 (2003).
Section 8 of the Mining Act of 1866 provided: "The right of way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted." An Act Granting the Right of Way to Ditch and Canal Owners over the Public Lands, and for Other Purposes, ch. 262, § 8, 14 Stat. 251, 253 (1866) (repealed 1976). This provision is more popularly known as R.S. 2477 due to its subsequent codification in the Revised Statutes as R.S. § 2477 (1873). The parties agree that, prior to July of 1897, when Sopatyk's predecessors in interest obtained a patent for the Anderson Placers, his land was federal property. Thus, if ACR became a public road under R.S. 2477, it must have occurred before July of 1897.
This Court has held that R.S. 2477 was a standing offer by the federal government to grant rights-of-way on public land to the states and that it can be an independent vehicle for creating a public road if there is "some positive act or acts on the part of the proper public authorities clearly manifesting an intention to accept such grant with respect to the particular highway in question." Farrell v. Bd. of Comm'rs, 138 Idaho 378, 384, 64 P.3d 304, 310 (2002) (quoting Kirk v. Schultz, 63 Idaho 278, 283, 119 P.2d 266, 268 (1941) ). This standard is "more lax than the requirements set forth in the state road creation statute." Id. at 384, 64 P.3d at 310. In Farrell, this Court found R.S. 2477 satisfied because there was an entry in the County Commission's minutes log from 1901 expressly accepting a dedication of the disputed road. Id.
In this case, by contrast, there is no order or minute entry by the Board or any other order by a public authority accepting ACR as a public road. In 1878, however, a committee of local miners filed a plat with the mining district creating a road along Anderson Creek. The County asserts that even though the miners committee was an informal body, the plat is a positive act by a proper public authority for R.S. 2477 purposes because "[t]his is how things were done on Idaho's frontier."
The County erred as a matter of law by ruling that the miners committee could be a "public authority" with the power to create state rights-of-way on federal lands. There appears to be no legal authority suggesting that an informal, apparently unelected committee is empowered by state law to file plats creating public streets. This is especially true in light of the fact that years before the miners committee was formed, the Territorial Government had already created Lemhi County and its Board of Commissioners, which would have been the proper public authority for declaring roads in Gibbonsville. An Act Creating and Organizing the County of Lemhi, §§ 1, 3–4, Laws and Resolutions Passed by the Fifth Legislative Assembly of the Terr. of Idaho 734, 734–35 (1869).
State law governs the manner in which a road on federal property becomes public under R.S. 2477. Galli v. Idaho Cnty., 146 Idaho 155, 160, 191 P.3d 233, 238 (2008) ; accord Standage Ventures, Inc. v. Arizona, 499 F.2d 248, 250 (9th Cir.1974) ; United States v. Pruden, 172 F.2d 503, 505 (10th Cir.1949) ; Smith v. Mitchell, 21 Wash. 536, 540, 58 P. 667, 668 (1899) (...
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