DISCUSSION

A. All of Appellants’ Claims Accrued at the Same Time.

Appellants argue that the district court erred in treating their claims as

accruing at the same time. Specifically, Appellants argue that their claims—

challenging public use of the easement, parking along the easement, and the

government’s satisfaction of its obligations under the easement—accrued at

different times and should have been analyzed on an individual basis.

For purposes of calculating the statute of limitations under the QTA, an

“action shall be deemed to have accrued on the date the plaintiff or his predecessor

in interest knew or should have known of the claim of the United States.” 28 U.S.C.

§ 2409a(g) (emphasis added). An action accrues when a “reasonable landowner”

would have been alerted to an adverse claim. Shultz v. Dep’t of Army, 886 F.2d

1157, 1160 (9th Cir. 1989).

All of Appellants’ claims—despite being organized as two separate causes of

action in the complaint—were ultimately premised on the public’s alleged

unauthorized use of the road. The claims therefore accrued at the same time—when

a reasonable landowner should have known of the government’s position that its

easement allowed for public use of the road.

Appellants’ complaint focuses its parking challenge on “public” parking in

the easement and is not a distinct claim that accrued separately from the public use

4 claim. Likewise, Appellants’ “patrol and maintain” claims are premised on

patrolling and maintaining the road against public use and thus also accrued at the

same time as the public use claim. A “reasonable landowner,” Shultz, 886 F.2d at

1160, would have been alerted to all of these claims at the same time, and therefore

they accrued simultaneously.

Accordingly, the district court did not err in treating all of Appellants’ claims

as accruing at the same time.

B. All of Appellants’ Claims are Time-Barred.

Finally, Appellants claim that the district court erred in determining that their

claims were time-barred under the QTA’s twelve-year statute of limitations. The

QTA’s statute of limitations requires Appellants to bring a case “within twelve years

of the date upon which [the claims] accrued.” 28 U.S.C. § 2409a(g). Accrual occurs

“on the date the plaintiff or his predecessor in interest knew or should have known

of the claim of the United States.” Id. And “[t]o start the limitations period, the

government’s claim must be adverse to the claim asserted by the [plaintiffs].”

Michel v. United States, 65 F.3d 130, 131–32 (9th Cir. 1995) (per curiam).

The district court did not clearly err in concluding that Appellants’ claims

were untimely. The district court based its determination on two sources of

evidence—Forest Service maps of the area from 1950 to 2005 which identified no

use restrictions on the road, and the government’s temporary closure of the road by

5 erecting a sign and barrier in May 2006. Together with the historic public use of the

road, the historic maps should have alerted a reasonable landowner of the

government’s view regarding public access of the easement more than twelve years

before Appellants filed suit. And the government’s temporary closure of the road in

2006 was consistent with this understanding.

CONCLUSION

Accordingly, for the reasons expressed herein and in our accompanying

opinion, the government’s motion to dismiss was properly granted. The judgment

of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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