Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Say It Ain’t So, Martha!

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Today’s Globe painted an unsettling story about a dispute in Marshfield, which pits neighbors and supporters of public access to beaches over the entitlements of wealthy landowners.  A protest a Rexame Beach yesterday was inspired by reports of an “imminent Land Court deal between the state attorney general’s office and abutters who claim private ownership of the beach.”  

This has been a long running dispute, having started in the 1700s.  Private interests lost then…but “new research” has turned up nothing favoring public access, although an 1832 court case ruled that the beach was public.  

Will this be another case where the wealthy and connected win the day?  Probably.  

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Comments

  1. A simple check with the office of the Plymouth County Register of Deeds should tell where the property lines are.  If a law has since been passed saying the public owns the beaches then any private owner at the time is entitled to compensation.

  2. I suspect the 1832 case is Thomas v. Inhabitants of Marshfield, 13 Pick. 240 (1832). The plaintiff, Thomas, owned property that abutted the beach. He claimed that he had what is called a prescriptive easement to use the beach to pasture his livestock, which means that he claimed that he and the prior owners of his land had used the beach for that purpose since time immemorial and thus had acquired a right to continue doing so. But Thomas admitted that he did not actually own the beach. The court held that Thomas couldn’t acquire a prescriptive easement, because either (1) the beach had been used by the public as a common or a public way, and you can’t acquire a prescriptive easement in such a case; or (2) even if the beach hadn’t been used as a common or a public way, when your livestock stray off your land onto another’s land, at best you have a defense to a claim of trespass, not a right to continue pasturing the animals on the neighbor’s land.

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    p>Of course, it’s difficult to know what bearing this case has on the present lawsuit without knowing what arguments the two sides are making. Justice4All, do you have any more information on this?

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    p>TedF

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