The Beach Rolls to Fort Worth: Severance Panel at Texas Wesleyan

It's Severance-palooza today on the Land Use Prof Blog, with Hannah Wiseman's great summary of the oral arguments at the recent rehearing of the Open Beaches Act case in the Texas Supreme Court, and the contribution in my previous post from Timothy Mulvaney.  Scroll down to the next two posts for that background and analysis.

But wait, there's more!  Prof. Mulvaney, who has done a lot of research on takings, including a piece on last year's Stop the Beach Renourishment, has been following Severance v. Patterson for a long time.  Last month he hosted a lively panel discussion on the case at Texas Wesleyan School of Law (ably sponsored by their Federalist Society and Environmental Law Society).  The participants were David Breemer, the attorney for plaintiff Carol Severance; Ellis Pickett, former chair of the Texas Upper Coast Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation; and yours truly.

Prof. Mulvaney spoke first and gave a helpful introduction to the case and the background of the legal issues.  Mr. Breemer, a principal with the Pacific Legal Foundation, gave his client's view of the case and argued vigorously that the state's interpretation of beach-access easement law is an unconstitutional interference with his client's property rights. 

I spoke a little bit about the Texas Supreme Court's initial opinion from November 2010, and also about the issue I focused on in my amicus curiae brief, which was (my view) that an easement must be proven up for each property through common law doctrines of dedication, prescription, or custom before we can even get to the question of whether it rolls. 

Mr. Pickett, whose Surfrider Foundation also filed an amicus brief (with which a former student of mine assisted in drafting), spoke passionately about the environmental costs of restricting the public interest in the beach.  He had lots of compelling pictures and even passed around the room a giant piece of twisted metal to make his point.  This was followed by a great Q&A session with the well-informed crowd.

What made it even more interesting is that when Prof. Mulvaney organized the panel, it was conceived as an after-action discussion of the November opinion.  It wasn't until just a couple of weeks beforehand that we all learned that the court had taken the unusual step of granting the rehearing.  By the way, you can read all of the briefs, including the amici, at the link from this post. 

It was a great event, and the other three participants have offered to give me a surfing lesson. The participants have all agreed to contribute to an upcoming issue of the Texas Wesleyan Law Review.

Here's the video!  [requires Real Player].  This video, plus Part 2, are also available at the Texas Weslayan web article on the event.

   

Matt Festa