PPL Montana LLC v. Montana

The Montana Supreme Court held on a summary judgment record that the State of Montana owns the riverbeds under more than 500 miles of river, including the riverbeds under multiple hydropower facilities on the upper Missouri, Madison, and Clark Fork rivers. This came as quite a shock, because for more than a century the riverbeds beneath those facilities have been treated as owned by private parties or the federal government. In reaching this result, the lower court concluded that the rivers were navigable when Montana joined the Union in 1889 and, therefore, that Montana held title to the riverbeds. The court upheld summary judgment for the State, notwithstanding a prior federal court decree, as well as 500 pages of expert testimony and exhibits disputing Montana's claim to title, establishing that the relevant sections of the rivers were not navigable at statehood. The consequences are draconian: The court below held that the State is entitled to collect tens of millions in retroactive back rent and millions more in future payments from the owners of the hydropower facilities. 

The question presented is:

Does the constitutional test for determining whether a section of a river is navigable for title purposes require a trial court to determine, based on evidence, whether the relevant stretch of the river was navigable at the time the State joined the Union as directed by United States v. Utah, 283 U.S. 64 (1931), or may the court simply deem the river as a whole generally navigable based on evidence of present-day recreational use, with the question "very liberally construed" in the State's favor?

Held: The Montana Supreme Court’s ruling that Montana owns and may charge for use of the riverbeds at issue was based on an infirm legal understanding of this Court’s rules of navigability for title under the equal-footing doctrine

Cert. granted 6/20/11. Decided 2/22/12.