LONE BUTTE CORP. V. STATE, 1991-NMSC-077,
112 N.M. 483, 816 P.2d 1105 (S. Ct. 1991)
LONE BUTTE CORPORATION, THOMAS
MacDONNELL, et. al., HENRY
McKINLEY, et. al., WILLIAM BENNETT, et. al., and GLEN
HUGHES TRUST, et. al., Plaintiffs-Appellants,
vs.
STATE OF NEW MEXICO, HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT, et. al.,
Defendants-Appellees
SUPREME COURT OF NEW MEXICO
1991-NMSC-077, 112 N.M. 483, 816 P.2d 1105
August 20, 1991, Filed. As
Amended
Appeal from the District Court of Santa
Fe County; Art Encinias, District Judge.
Richard V. Gose, Las Cruces, New Mexico,
for Appellants.
Kendall Fischer, Santa Fe, New Mexico,
for Appellee Highway Department.
Charles G. Berry, Albuquerque, New
Mexico, for Appellee Stewart Title.
Susan Schaefer McDevitt, Santa Fe, New
Mexico, for Appellee Dillenschneider.
James V. Noble, Jr., Santa Fe, New
Mexico, for Appellees Dobsons and Stotts.
Dan Sosa, Jr., Chief Justice. Richard E. Ransom, Justice, Gene E. Franchini,
Justice, concur.
{1} Plaintiffs-appellants,
four groups of land owners in Santa Fe County, appeal summary judgment in favor
of Defendants-appellees, who are collectively the New Mexico Highway and
Transportation Department (the Department), various predecessors
{*484} in title to the property now owned by
appellants, and various title insurance companies who issued policies of title
insurance on the property. For purposes of this appeal, we refer to appellees
as "the Department." The nature of the action below was inverse condemnation.
Appellants had alleged that the Department, in undertaking a 1989 widening of
State Highway 14 in Santa Fe County, unlawfully took twenty-five feet of their
property without making compensation for it.
{2} In 1937, the Department
acquired rights to the property for initial construction of the highway by way
of grants of easements, or in one case by a grant in fee simple. By such grants
the Department acquired a strip of land one-hundred and fifty feet wide
extending through the length of the collective property later acquired by
appellants. In 1937, the Department used only fifty feet on both sides from the
center of the one-hundred fifty foot strip in its construction of the highway.
After finishing the highway, the Department fenced off its boundary on the
property later acquired by appellants, but only to a width of fifty feet from
the center of the highway, instead of to a width of seventy-five feet, because
the Department did not need the extra twenty-five feet in 1937.
{3} When appellants acquired
the property they thought the Department's claimed interest in their land ended
at the fence line, that is, at a distance of fifty feet, from the center of the
highway. In 1989, when the Department began widening the highway, it sought to
use the other twenty-five feet of land which it claimed to have acquired in
1937. Appellants' respective title searches at various times prior to 1989 had
not turned up the Department's claim to the other twenty-five feet. Instead the
grants were filed, but not recorded, with the county clerk under a provision of
New Mexico law set forth in NMSA 1978, Section
14-9-7, which provides, in
pertinent part:
The state... may file the original instruments affecting such
real estate with the county clerk and ex officio recorder in the county where
the property is situated, and such filings shall be properly indexed by the
county clerk and ex officio recorder in the county, and such filings shall have
the full legal effect of recording and be legal notice of the rights of the
public entities... in and to said rights-of-way, easements or other interests
conveyed or granted by the instruments affecting the real estate.
NMSA 1978, 14-9-7(B) (Repl. Pamp. 1988).
{4} Appellants contend that
because the county clerk did not enter in the index book and page numbers for
the filings or otherwise record the grants as the clerk does for real estate
transactions where the recording party is someone other than the state,
appellants had no notice, constructive or actual, of the Department's claimed
interest in the additional twenty-five feet of land. Appellants point to the
form of index displayed in NMSA 1978, Section
14-10-3 (Repl. Pamp.1988) and
note that no book or page numbers were filled in by the clerk for the filings
in question. Thus, appellants contend, there would be nothing to alert a title
searcher to look somewhere else than in the books of record which contain
copies of documents by which real estate is conveyed in New Mexico.
{5} The Department has
introduced uncontroverted evidence showing that in 1937 it filed each grant
with the county clerk, that the clerk entered each filing in the County Clerk's
Reception Book and then indexed each grant alphabetically in the Direct and
Indirect Indexes. In making the latter indexing, the clerk wrote in the name of
the grantor and grantee for each grant, as well as the date the grants were
received, the date of each instrument, the kind of instrument and a legal
description of the property. The Department contends that the clerk sufficiently
indexed the grants for a title searcher to become aware of them in a routine
title search. Further, the Department contends that if the clerk had entered a
book and page number on the index and recorded the grants, the purpose of
Section 14-9-7 would have been defeated. The Department alleges the purpose was
to save the state and its entities money in paying recording fees. The
Department argues that if this system is invalidated
{*485}
now, thousands of state land condemnation proceedings in New Mexico would
likewise be invalidated.
{6} The issue on appeal is
whether the clerk should have entered a book and page number on the index and
recorded the grants as the clerk ordinarily would have recorded them had the
grantee or filer not been the state. Because the issue is framed in this way,
we have no recourse but to affirm the grant of summary judgment. The issue is
presented as one of statutory construction. The statute clearly provides that
the state or its entities "may
file the original instruments"
and that "such
filings shall have the full legal effect of
recording."
NMSA 1978, 14-9-7 (B) (emphasis added). Both the Department and the county
clerk satisfied the requirements of the statute. More was not required of them.
See Town of Hurley v. New Mexico Mun. Boundary Comm'n, 94 N.M. 606,
614
P.2d 18 (1980) (difference between "filing" and
"recording").
{7} We sympathize with
appellants' plight. In purchasing their lands, they justifiably relied on title
searches that assured them that the highway department could encroach no
further on the frontage to their property than the fence line. The
constitutional issue is not before us. We are thus constrained to perform the
only role allowed us in this case, and that is to construe the statute in
accordance with the legislature's intention. Having done so, we conclude that
the grants to the Department were properly filed with the full legal effect of
a recording. Accordingly, summary judgment is affirmed in its entirety.