WELLS, Maine — The push for greater public access to intertidal land on Moody Beach is going to the Maine Supreme Court, setting up a legal battle with roots in the 17th century.
Last Friday, several local residents filed an appeal with the high court in an attempt to overturn a pair of decisions in the 1980s that gave private beachfront owners rights to the area between the high and low water marks.
“There are certain things that can't be owned, and that are resources that belong to everybody,” Keith Richard, the lawyer representing the main plaintiff in the appeal, said Wednesday.
The cases from the 1980s also limited public access to the beach essentially to hunting, fishing, and boating. These decisions are rooted in a colonial ordinance seen in the Massachusetts Body of Liberties in 1647. Courts have argued that Maine inherited these laws when it separated from Massachusetts in 1820.
Richard argues that the definition is too narrow and that, centuries later, it doesn’t fit.
“You can take aim and fire at birds, but you can’t go birdwatching. It's totally absurd.” Richard said. “Anyone can understand that our society is different than it was since then.”
A more than 80-page brief field by the plaintiff also says the court misinterpreted fundamental legal principals about how laws are inherited when states form from other states.
The broad goal in filing the suit is to open the intertidal area to greater recreational uses. But to the defendants—beach front owners—a change would abandon precedent and result in the theft of rights.
“A decision in the year 2024 that takes that away, the rights that these property owners have had, would be a taking,” Chris Kieser, the lawyer for one of the property owners, said Wednesday. “Court decisions going all the way from the beginning of the state all the way up through a few years ago have all recognized private ownership of the tide lands.”
The defendants in the case are expected to file their brief to the plaintiff's appeal sometime in August. Richard says if the court sides with the plaintiffs, laws surrounding access to intertidal lands would likely change statewide, not just at Moody Beach.