Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Mississippi (1988)

This is an American decision. Indian students meet it because the Supreme Court of India, in M.C. Mehta v Kamal Nath (the Span Motels case), drew on the American public trust cases to build the Indian doctrine that the State holds natural resources in trust for the public. You cannot answer a public trust question well without knowing what the doctrine protects and where its boundary lies. Phillips Petroleum is about that boundary.

The question was narrow but sharp: does the State's public trust title reach land under water that is tidal but not navigable? The majority said yes — the test is the ebb and flow of the tide, not navigability. The dissent said the trust exists to protect commerce and should stop at navigable waters. Between them you get both sides of an exam argument about how far public trust extends.

The petitioners held record title, traced back to pre-statehood Spanish land grants, to 42 acres of land in southwestern Mississippi underlying the north branch of Bayou LaCroix and 11 small drainage streams. These waters lay several miles north of the Gulf Coast and were not navigable, but they were influenced by the tide because they were adjacent and tributary to the Jourdan River, a navigable tidal river flowing into the Gulf.

Mississippi claimed that by the equal footing doctrine it had acquired at statehood (1817), and held in public trust, all land under any waters influenced by the tide, navigable or not. It issued oil and gas leases over the land. The record owners sued to quiet title. The Chancery Court and the Mississippi Supreme Court held for the State, finding that it had acquired "fee simple title to all lands naturally subject to tidal influence, inland to today's mean high water mark".

"The issue here is whether the State of Mississippi, when it entered the Union in 1817, took title to lands lying under waters that were influenced by the tide running in the Gulf of Mexico, but were not navigable in fact."

A second question was whether long record title and long payment of taxes by the private owners defeated the State's claim.

Affirmed (5–3). The lands passed to Mississippi on its admission to the Union.

The tidal test. "Consequently, we reaffirm our longstanding precedents which hold that the States, upon entry into the Union, received ownership of all lands under waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide." The lands here were under tidewaters and therefore passed to the State.

Public trust is not only about navigation. The Court pointed out that the States' interests in tidelands "have nothing to do with navigation" in many cases — fishing, shellfish, reclamation for urban expansion, regulation of oyster planting. "It would be odd to acknowledge such diverse uses of public trust tidelands and then suggest that the sole measure of the expanse of such lands is the navigability of the waters over them."

Difference of degree, not kind. "Admittedly, there is a difference in degree between the waters in this case and nonnavigable waters on the seashore that are affected by the tide. But there is no difference in kind." All tidewaters are connected to the sea; these lands shared the "geographical, chemical and environmental" qualities that make tidal lands unique.

Certainty. The ebb-and-flow rule has the benefit of certainty and ease of application. "We are unwilling, after its lengthy history at common law, in this Court, and in many state courts, to abandon the ebb-and-flow rule now, and seek to fashion a new test to govern the limits of public trust tidelands."

Equities and State law. Long record title and payment of taxes did not change the result. How such facts could transfer ownership from the State was a question of State law, and the Mississippi Supreme Court had held that the State's ownership could not be lost by adverse possession, laches or any other equitable doctrine. The Court also said its ruling would not upset titles in States that had long ago granted their tidelands to private owners: "Our decision today does nothing to change ownership rights in States which previously relinquished a public trust claim to tidelands such as those at issue here."

On entering the Union, each State acquired title, held in public trust, to all lands beneath waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, whether or not those waters are navigable in fact. Tidal influence, not navigability, marks the extent of public trust tidelands; what a State later does with those lands, and whether private claims can divest it, is a matter of State law.

• Public trust answers (Unit 2): list Phillips Petroleum with Illinois Central Railroad as the American authorities behind M.C. Mehta v Kamal Nath. Say clearly that both are United States Supreme Court decisions, persuasive only in India.
• What the trust covers: use the majority's reasoning that public trust interests go beyond navigation — fishing, shellfish, environmental qualities — to support a wide Indian reading covering rivers, forests and wetlands.
• Critical question: Can the public trust doctrine be misused by the State? Use the dissent: a belated claim made to lease land for mineral exploitation, at the cost of long-settled private titles.
• Short note: The ebb-and-flow test in the public trust doctrine. Give the issue, the 5–3 holding, the certainty rationale and the dissent's navigability test.