Caltrans relinquishment creates new local ROW line?

[Elias French]

Question regarding local public ROW alignment near State Highway:

Caltrans obtains much land via condemnation, including portions of local ROW’s. Highway is constructed, excess lands are conveyed out from Caltrans circa 1970 via Directors Deed and Relinquishment Deed. Said conveyances described, respectively, a privately owned parcel and an adjacent local public ROW ( surface street). The local ROW boundary described in said conveyances is in the vicinity of, but not the same as, the equivalent parcel / local ROW boundary as it existed prior to condemnation. No local municipality legislation or other document is found accepting the new configuration local ROW for use or maintenance.

Did the Caltrans condemnation / relinquishment process and conveyances legally vacate / merge / resubdivide / realign affected parcel and local ROW line? Is any local municipality process required to perfect this operation? Improvements and usage match the new configuration. Local municipality records do not/are not updated.

The reason for asking is local agency/ private owner/title company uncertainty. Assessor has added back the pre-condemnation lines resulting in strips and gores etc.

Thanks for your input and any pertinent references and codes.

[jamesh1467]

Here is my opinion. It is only my opinion.

• Once CT obtains the land, all prior rights are extinguished, and the Department shall have "full possession" per Streets and Highways Code - Division 1 Chapter 1- Article 3-Section 90.
  Any condemnation procedures back in the day have the potential to modify that, but without evidence to the contrary from those proceedings, I would assume all prior rights and or lines were extinguished. The current section 90 was amended in 1965 and predates the deeds in question and theoretically should have given CT "full possession" over all of their land at the time the statute was instituted, even if there were conflicting documents from the condemnation. Although that's a pretty big 5th amendment problem if it were challenged.But barring something weird, CT owned it in fee prior to the deeds as a common owner.

• The new deeds created new rights that are in effect today to transfer CT's rights away from CT. Assuming those processes were carried out correctly.

• If there is no document found accepting the new configuration, the local agency has an argument they did not accept the roads and CT still owns it where the new line exists. However, that would be quite the process and ultimately it would likely come down to who maintains the ROW per Union Transp. Co. v. Sacramento County. Because acceptance of maintenance has been determined to be acceptance. Without evidence of CT maintaining the ROW, and the local agency not wanting to fight it. I would assume they own it. There was a long line of precedent in the Union Transp. Co. v. Sacramento County case about how roads become public roads after 5 years if traveled on by multiple persons and used for the public good. etc. etc. All that fun stuff about when a public ROW is magically a public ROW. Again, the agency could potentially fight it for ownership rights, but it might just be that a document is missing. Either way the Director's deed line for the private parcel should still hold. So the lines hold. Its just who owns them.

In summary, without weird stuff that contradicts the assumptions above, use the new lines and stop using the old ones. When in doubt, make it simpler and easier for others to understand and retrace your footsteps.

Also, this is basically just junior-senior rights stuff/resolution of overlaps. Barring some overwhelming legal authority from CT, (where they could deed away prior rights before their ownership? Or they didn't extinguish prior rights with their ownership without a CCUA?) they deeded away only the land that they deeded away. This is pre-SMA timeline and there were no real restrictions on parcel divisions under 5 parcels until the 1974 updates. Even if you take CT out of the equation this is still just a basic parcel division from a common parcel owner. So, unless there is some reason CT would supersede that from the laws that were in place at the time of division for CT specifically, I don't see how the old lines would hold if all the new lines in the new deeds came from a common owner. Subdivisions by deed of below 5 parcels were allowed at the time of these conveyances without restriction.

Quiet title if you have additional issues/questions. But this sounds like a great theoretical exercise we just had due to an assessor doing what assessors do......

Ask the title company to guarantee the title, and see what they do if you are looking to stir the pot and get some entertainment out of seeing what will happen. It honestly might be entertaining to see what happens.....

[Warren Smith]

Typically, CalTrans will enter into an acceptance agreement with the local agency at the time CT acquires its right of way parcels from landowners, so that - at the completion of improvements and determination of excess lands - CT will process a Relinquishment resolution by the Transportation Commission with reference to the previous acceptance and record the reso along with a Highway Map with the local Recorder.

[Elias French]

Thank you both, this is very helpful. Much appreciated.