The Fitzgerald Living Trust v. United States

The Fitzgerald Living Trust challenges the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Forest Service and individual Forest Service officials (“the Forest Service”). We must decide the nature of the Trust’s right of access over a national forest road, and whether the Forest Service’s proposed statutory easement, providing the Trust with access over the road, is reasonable.

I

In 1988, Raymond and Nancy Fitzgerald purchased the O’Haco Cabins Ranch, a twenty-eight acre cattle ranch located in northern Arizona approximately fifty miles southwest of Winslow. The Fitzgeralds maintain a residence on the property and have used and continue to use the ranch as a base camp for their cattle grazing operations in the adjacent Sitgreaves National Forest. The property contains a house, with no electricity or generator, and a water source.

In 1920, President Wilson granted the O’Haco Cabin Ranch property to Stelzer Tillman pursuant to the 1862 Homestead Act. Act of May 20, 1862, ch. 75, 12 Stat. 392 -93 (1862) (codified at 43 U.S.C. §§ 161-284 ) (repealed 1976). The patent transferred the tract of land “with the…