Landowner May Sue State Officials, Though Not the State of Texas Itself, to Determine State Ownership Based on Navigability of a Stream

摘要

The Texas Supreme Court in Texas Parks and Wildlife Department v. Sawyer Trust, No. 07-0945, 2011 WL 3796347 (Tex. Aug. 26, 2011), in the view of the lone dissenting justice, effectively abolished the state's immunity from suit to determine title to real property.The Sawyer Trust, owner of land in Donley County crossed by the Salt Fork of the Red River, sought to contract for the removal and sale of sand and gravel from the streambed. The land within the bed of a navigable stream is owned by the State of Texas, and the trust's contractor inquired of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (Department), from which the trust was required to obtain a permit for the operation, whether the state claimed that the Salt Fork was navigable. When the Department refused to take a position one way or the other, the trust sued it for a declaratory judgment that the river was not navigable and that the trust, not the state, owned the riverbed where it crossed the trust's property. After a General Land Office surveyor concluded during the suit's pendency that the Salt Fork was navigable, the Department maintained that the state owned the riverbed but asserted that sovereign immunity barred the suit. Id. at * 1-2, 13.