High court looks again at fences case

Coeur d’Alene has taken all the value and use from the Simpson family’s strip of Sanders Beach without recompense, and that’s unconstitutional, attorneys told the Idaho Supreme Court on Tuesday.

In a rare move, the state high court agreed to rehear the case revolving around two chain-link fences the Simpson family erected to keep the public off the beach.

In February the court ruled, in a 3-2 vote, that the two fences violate the city’s shoreline laws and that asking them to remove the structures isn’t taking the family’s East Lakeshore Drive land or reducing the waterfront property’s value.

Attorney John Magnuson, who represents the family, asked the court to reconsider.

He told the justices, who are having hearings in Coeur d’Alene this week, that because the family can’t build on the land, erect a fence or keep out the public, the property no longer has any value. He argued the city can’t take a person’s land for public use without first paying the property owner.

“This deals with perhaps the most fundamental of all private property rights,” Magnuson said.

The only thing the Simpsons can do with the beach is pay property taxes, he added.

Yet Coeur d’Alene’s attorney, Mike Haman, said the city isn’t taking the land. Instead, he said, the Simpsons are upset because the city isn’t enforcing trespass laws on the beach because it was never clear where private property ended and public property began.

“The city has not gone on to Sanders Beach and pitched a tent,” Haman said.

To determine once and for all where private land ends and public property begins on Sanders Beach, the city filed a separate lawsuit asking a district court judge to establish a legal high-water mark.

That case was recently appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court after a district judge set the ordinary high-water mark for Sanders Beach at 2,130 feet above sea level, 2 vertical feet higher than the summer pool and what the state considers the high-water mark. That means landowners along East Lakeshore Drive, including the Simpsons, cannot legally kick people off the beach anywhere south of the seawall on the east end of the popular beach. The seawall is at 2,130 feet.

The Supreme Court can now use the information in the high-water mark case when deliberating a new decision about the legitimacy of the Simpson fence.

It’s unknown when the court will issue its new ruling.

The Simpson family claims it was forced to erect the fence in 1997 to keep out trespassers, because the city refused to enforce its trespassing laws.

The city’s shoreline law prohibits structures 40 feet from the high-water mark.