Town of Monterey, Tennessee v. Garden Inn, LLC, No. M2020-01511-COA-R3-CV (Ct. App. Tenn. Nashville May 24, 2022)

Summary of Facts and Issues: The Walker family owned two abutting parcels of land. Parcel 1 encompassed a lodging known as the Garden Inn. Parcel 2 was undeveloped and hosted a popular natural landmark known as Bee Rock. In 1995, the Walkers conveyed Parcel 1 subject to a 50-foot-wide easement to access Parcel 2, and Parcel 1 was later transferred to The Garden Inn, LLC (Garden Inn). In 2018, acting on a desire to preserve Bee Rock as a nature area in perpetuity, the Walkers granted a conservation easement on Parcel 2 to the Tennessee Parks and Greenways Foundation (TPGF), a nonprofit organization. On the following day, they donated Parcel 2 to the Town of Monterey, subject to TPGF’s conservation easement. As a result of the express ingress/egress easement, access to Parcel 2 via Parcel 1 was open to the public. However, tensions grew when Garden Inn took issue with visitors using the easement to access Bee Rock. After Garden Inn began accosting visitors using the easement, the Town and the Walkers filed a declaratory judgment action in 2019. Among other matters, Garden Inn asserted in a motion for summary judgment that TPGF was an indispensable party.

The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the Town and the Walkers, finding that the access easement was broadly worded, without limitations, and thereby permitted the general public to cross Parcel 1 to access Parcel 2. The trial court further ruled that TPGF was not an indispensable party. Garden Inn appealed the ruling on whether TPGF was in indispensable party, and the appellate court affirmed. In particular, the appellate court found that TPGF’s potential interest in public access to Parcel 2 was not directly related to its primary purpose of preserving the natural features of the parcel.

Analysis and Notes: The procedural posture of this case is rather strange, and winds up with a determination that public access to a conservation easement protected property was only a remote interest of the nonprofit easement holder. As a matter of law that finding appears sound, but it is ironic that finding the land trust to be a nonparty was important to securing the result in favor of continued public access.

• State: Tennessee

• Procedural Status: Case concluded.

• Date: 2022

• Keywords: Access; enabling statute; joinder; neighbor; private conservation easement.