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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 31 > Issue 8 (1933)

 

Abstract

May the littoral owner whose summer cottage abuts on one of the Great Lakes bring actions of trespass quare clausum against pedestrians who traverse the sand beach which lies at the aquatic terminus of his property? To state the same problem in different form, may he build a lateral line fence designed to exclude the public from that segment of the lake-side beach which he claims as his? The question has never been directly decided by the supreme court of any State, yet it is a source of constant strife between littoral owners who desire privacy and seclusion, and strolling pleasure seekers who claim a public right to enjoy sea-side delights elsewhere than in the limited confines of public bathing beaches. Many a cottage owner erects "private" signs, or fences; and many a pedestrian disregards them. Instances of nocturnal destruction of such fences by other littoral owners who themselves claim a right of free passage have become of increasingly frequent occurrence during the last few years; it seems only a matter of time until the parties involved in some such neighborhood imbroglio will seek an adjudication of their respective rights in the courts. Nor will the controversy be without great significance; it will involve the rights of the public in respect to 3,772 miles of lake shore in the United States. The problem is one which must be decided with reference to similar cases - and there are many of them - establishing rights of the public along the shores of the ocean, and along the shores of inland lakes. A brief consideration of such adjudications, examined in the light of their bearing on the right of public passage along Great Lakes beaches, will be here attempted.

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