Vaughn v. Vermilion Corp.

1979-12-04

Headline: Affirms private owners’ control over privately built canals that join public waterways, but sends back the question whether diverting or destroying natural waterways creates public use rights, affecting fishermen and landowners.

Holding: The Court affirmed that privately built canals joining navigable waterways are not automatically open for public use, but vacated and sent back the question whether diverting or destroying natural waterways creates public rights.

Real World Impact:

Allows private owners to restrict access to privately built canals that connect to public waterways.
Leaves open whether diverting or destroying natural waterways creates public access rights.
Affects fishers, hunters, and landowners who use or depend on canal access.

Topics: waterway access, private property rights, fishing and boating, canal ownership

Summary

Background

A private company leasing Exxon land in Louisiana dug and long controlled a network of manmade canals about 60 feet wide and 8 feet deep. The canals are tidal, navigable in fact, connect to other natural waterways, and lie between the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Gulf of Mexico. The company uses the canals for oil and gas work and subleases land and canal use to hunters, trappers, and fishers. The company posted over 400 “No Trespassing” signs and sometimes stopped strangers from entering. A group of people repeatedly entered the canals to fish and shrimp without the company’s permission, and the company sued in state court for permanent injunctions. The trial court granted summary judgment for the company, and the Louisiana Court of Appeal affirmed.

Reasoning

The Court said its opinion in Kaiser Aetna controls most of this case. It addressed two questions: whether privately built channels that later join navigable waterways become public, and whether that result changes if the private canals were made by diverting or destroying pre-existing natural navigable waters. The Court agreed the lower court was correct about the second question: canals built privately and joining public waterways are not automatically open to all people. But the Court found a factual dispute about whether the private canals displaced natural navigable waters. Because that factual issue could be a defense under federal law, the Court vacated the lower court’s ruling on that first question and sent the case back for further proceedings consistent with Kaiser Aetna.

Real world impact

For now, private owners who built and control canals can keep outsiders off those canals in similar circumstances. But the ruling leaves open whether destroying or diverting natural waterways to create canals would give the public a right to use them; that factual issue must be resolved below and could change outcomes in other cases.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Blackmun (joined by two others) dissented from the Court’s narrower result. He would have held the artificial canals are “navigable waters of the United States” because they provide commercial access to an interstate waterway and would therefore be open to the public, eliminating the need to remand.