A family in Indiana, whose members for five generations have owned a parcel of land with a cabin along Lake Michigan’s shoreline, is suing the state after the Indiana Supreme Court simply moved the line defining the edge of their property so that the beach now belongs to the state.
That’s even though the original documentation of the land clearly shows the beach is private property. And the family has been paying ownership taxes on that land.
The fight is just the latest of a series of disputes across the country, several of them involving beachfront land, in which governments abruptly take “ownership” of what families have owned, maintained, and paid taxes on for years.
In this case, the Pavlock family already had granted an easement across their private sand to the state, so the public could cross it without hindrance.
But their appeasement wasn’t enough.
The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a constitutional violations case in federal court in Hammond, Indiana, on the family’s behalf, after the “Indiana Supreme Court effectively held that these lakefront owners never owned the beach despite their deeds and despite undisputed local, state, and federal acknowledgement over the years.”
“They paid for that beach and their deeds reflect as much,” the filing states.
The change made by the state was that instead of adhering to original documents showing the private land extending to a point under the waters of the lake, the state court simply grabbed that ownership, alleging that the private property ends at the “ordinary high-water mark.”
That turned a significant portion of the beachfront from private property into public property.
Without compensation.
The state court staged the property grab in a case from just last year.
The legal team explained, “Indiana’s 45-mile shoreline along Lake Michigan is home to many property owners, including Randy and Kimberley Pavlock, who leave behind the busy hubbub of nearby Chicago each summer and on weekends throughout the year.
“Kimberley’s family has owned the land for five generations. Today, Randy and Kimberley enjoy every minute they can at their modest two-story home on the lake with their children and grandchildren. As with many of Indiana’s lakefront owners, the Pavlocks’ official property line stretches across the beach past the water’s edge, and they pay taxes on the entire swath of land.”
In 1980 they granted an easement to let the public – at nearby Indiana Dunes federal park – walk along their beach.
Then came the state court decision that “moved their property line to the beach’s vegetation line (the high-water mark),” the legal team reported.
“The court’s decision flouted Indiana common law and the law of every other Great Lakes state and gave the state exclusive title to all the land below the lake’s high-water mark. … The Pavlocks can no longer use what was previously their backyard, and they have received no compensation for the taking,” the legal team reported.
The federal court action against the state and its officials based on the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution and seeks declaratory and injunctive relief.
The previous standard was, in fact, adopted by the same state Supreme Court. In 1837 it ruled “private owners along navigable non-tidal water in Indiana ‘must be considered as owning the soil to the ordinary low-water mark.'”
In fact, the government periodically has purchased parcels of the disputed land, in order to have beach access.
