Bell v. Town of Wells

I do not agree that public recreational rights in the Maine coast are confined strictly to “fishing,” “fowling,” and “navigation”, however “sympathetically generous” the interpretation of those terms might be. The Court concludes that the shoreowners have the unrestricted right to exclude any member of the public from the intertidal lands unless that person is engaged in fishing, fowling or navigation. That conclusion is premised upon the erroneous assumption that the Colonial Ordinance is the exclusive and preeminent source of all public rights. In fact, public rights in the intertidal lands…