


The Illinois Supreme Court building is pictured in Springfield. (Capitol Information Illinois file photograph)

Can residence owners bar some others from accessing a river that crosses their house?
By PETER HANCOCK

Capitol Information Illinois

[email protected]


SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Supreme Courtroom is becoming questioned to decide the extent to which residence entrepreneurs can block any one else, together with neighboring house proprietors, from accessing a river that operates as a result of their assets.


It is a dilemma of law that Illinois courts have not entirely resolved just before and one particular in excess of which distinct states have vastly unique procedures.


The case entails two property house owners who very own land along the Mazon River, in Grundy County, a portion of which has been declared a Nationwide Historic Landmark because it has major and special fossil deposits relationship back some 300 million yrs.


The Mazon River is specified as non-navigable below Illinois regulation, meaning it is not extensive or deep adequate to carry industrial targeted visitors such as barges.


Adam Holm and his household very own two noncontiguous parcels of land along the river, one particular of which is available by road and one particular of which is not.


Holm, who operates a fossil-hunting business, used a kayak to traverse down the river from one particular parcel of land to the other to assemble fossils, passing by means of land owned by Peter Kodat, who also operates a fossil looking business.


In September 2016, Kodat known as the Grundy County Sheriff’s Workplace to report two people kayaking in entrance of his home. Sheriff’s officers responded and informed Holm that he was trespassing by kayaking on the river, even if he remained in the kayak and never went on land.


Holm then sued, asking the court docket to declare that as a riparian landowner, he experienced a proper to obtain the entire duration of the river, even if that intended traversing across Kodat’s house.


Whilst there had been allegations that Holm experienced, in point, been taking fossils from Kodat’s property, that was by no means adjudicated in court docket.


At 1st, the trial court docket sided with Holm, indicating he had a suitable to accessibility the whole surface area of the river. But Kodat requested the courtroom to reconsider that conclusion. In March 2020, the court reversed by itself and held that Kodat experienced an absolute correct to exclude any person from accessing the portion of the river that flowed across his assets.


The 3rd District Courtroom of Appeals upheld that selection.


At concern, in accordance to Holm’s attorney Zachary Pollack, is no matter whether a “civil law” basic principle must use, making it possible for a riparian landowner to use the entire surface of a non-navigable river or whether courts need to use a “common law” principle that says riparian landowners have a suitable to exclude some others from accessing the part of a river that crosses their home.


Pollack mentioned that some states, like New Mexico, have rules that effectively make rivers and streams general public home, as a result prohibiting landowners from barring community obtain to these waters.


“We never have that below,” he said all through oral arguments Tuesday. “So all over again, you happen to be dealing with a unique framework.”


In Illinois, he said, courts have under no circumstances directly tackled the dilemma of the civil regulation principle that applies to accessing rivers, lakes and streams. Most selections have dealt with access to lakes.


The most noteworthy, he mentioned, was a 1988 conclusion dealing with entry to Lake Zurich, a private physique of water in Lake County. In that circumstance, the plaintiff, who owned assets on the lake, operated a company that rented boats to the community for use on the lake and the court held that people shoppers have been entitled to “reasonable use” of the whole lake, such as the waters earlier mentioned other house owners’ portion of the lake mattress.


But Kodat’s legal professional Chad Layton argued that there are sizeable differences among a lake and a stream, and he said house entrepreneurs along a stream like the Mazon River have a reputable curiosity in holding men and women off of their assets.


“They’re asking to open up up a enormous can of worms in phrases of realistic use,” he explained. “And there is no limitation proposed by the by the plaintiffs with respect to what style of use would be permitted, and the plaintiffs are inquiring for would let kayakers, boaters. It would make it possible for get together barges. It would allow people today with stereos to coastline as a result of somebody’s yard. It would let water skiers. And you will find no restrict to how lots of occasions any individual could go again and forth across somebody’s assets.”


The court is most likely to difficulty its ruling on the situation later this year.




Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service masking condition govt and distributed to extra than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded principally by the Illinois Push Basis and the Robert R. McCormick Basis.




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