{"id":13798,"date":"2025-03-24T01:16:26","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T06:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agrilife.org\/texasaglaw\/?p=13798"},"modified":"2026-04-17T15:09:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T20:09:36","slug":"court-rules-in-corner-trespassing-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrilife.org\/texasaglaw\/2025\/03\/24\/court-rules-in-corner-trespassing-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Rules in Corner-Crossing Trespassing Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued an important ruling in Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape<\/em>, a case regarding “corner-crossing” on checkerboarded land in the West.\u00a0 This important decision impacts landowners and the public alike.<\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

Across the western United States, there are millions of acres platted into squares that alternate in ownership with one square being private and the next public that resembles a checkerboard.\u00a0 For 150 years, a conflict has been brewing over property law and access to public lands in these checkerboarded areas.\u00a0 \u00a0The court framed the question as follows:\u00a0 “Can a private landowner prevent a person from stepping across adjoining corners of federal public land?”\u00a0 In other words, does a person on public land commit trespass on the adjacent private land when he or she corner-crosses in this manner?<\/p>\n

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Iron Bar Holdings, LLC (“Iron Bar”) owns a checkerboarded ranch in Wyoming spanning 50 square miles.\u00a0 Their holdings include privately owned land, federal public lands, and state-owned public lands.\u00a0 There are 27 publicly owned parcels, totaling 11,000 acres in this 50 square mile area.\u00a0 The only way to access these state and federal lands (other than by aircraft) is by corner-crossing between Iron Bar’s private holdings.\u00a0 Iron Bar, seeking to prevent corner-crossing, posted two no trespassing signposts connected by chains over the USGS survey marker denoting the corners of several of its sections of land.<\/p>\n

The BLM authorizes elk hunting by the public on federal lands in this part of Wyoming. The Defendants are elk hunters from Missouri who traveled to Wyoming to hunt elk in 2020.\u00a0 They intended to access the various squares of public land by corner-crossing over Iron Bar’s property. The hunters used a GPS mapping tool to ascertain land ownership.\u00a0 Using this tool, they were able to “corner-cross,” stepping directly from one piece of public land to the next.\u00a0 They swung themselves around the no trespassing sign posts to cross Iron Bar’s corners without touching their land.\u00a0 They never made contact with the surface of Iron Bar’s land, although they did momentarily occupy its airspace when making their corner-crossing.\u00a0 For several days, the Defendants hunted on public land, Sections 24, 26, 30, and 36 on the map below.\u00a0 The hunters returned in 2021, this time bringing a steel A-frame ladder to corner-cross without even touching Iron Bar’s signposts.<\/p>\n

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Iron Bar employees confronted the hunters in 2020 and 2021.\u00a0 Employees interfered with hunting activities by driving vehicles across public parcels to scare the elk away. Employees called the sheriff and Wyoming Game and Fish Department, but both refused to take action.<\/p>\n

Litigation<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2021, Iron Bar’s ranch manager called the local prosecutor’s office, and the prosecutor agreed to charge the hunters with criminal trespass. The hunters took this case to a jury trial and were acquitted of the criminal trespass charge.<\/p>\n

The same day that the jury found for the hunters in the criminal case, Iron Bar served the hunters with this lawsuit for civil trespassing, claiming $9 million in damages for diminution of property value.<\/p>\n

The trial court granted the hunters’ motion for summary judgment, ruling corner-crossing did not constitute unlawful trespass.<\/p>\n

Iron Bar appealed.<\/p>\n

Tenth Circuit Opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed.\u00a0 [Read Opinion here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

History<\/span><\/p>\n

The opinion beings with an interesting history lesson on land ownership and expansion in the American West.\u00a0 The checkerboard approach to land ownership, the court explains, came out of the development of the railroad.\u00a0 It created townships, which were then subdivided into 36 sections (640 acres each), as depicted below.\u00a0 The odd-numbered sections were granted to railroad companies corresponding to each mile of track the company laid.\u00a0 The ownership of even-numbered squares was retained by the federal government.<\/p>\n

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The first conflicts arose in the 1800s during the range wars between cattlemen and sheep herders, and ranchers against homesteaders.\u00a0 It was the classic open range versus closed range dispute. When cattlemen began to fence land, including the publicly-owned checkerboard squares, Congress stepped in with the Unlawful Inclosures Act of 1885 (UIA).<\/p>\n

Airspace Ownership – Wyoming Law<\/span><\/p>\n

The court turned to the question of whether Iron Bar owns the airspace rights, and the corresponding right to exclude corner-crossers from its airspace. Property rights are defined by state law, and the right to exclude “has long been a core property right.”\u00a0 Under Wyoming law, ownership of the space above land is vested in the surface owner, subject to the right of flight. The law has long held that a trespass may be committed on, beneath, or above the surface.\u00a0 Practical concerns over how this doctrine would square with air travel reached the United States Supreme Court in 1946 in US v. Causby.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>There, the Court held that a landowner “owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land.”\u00a0 The Court also held that invasions of low-level space are in the same category as surface invasions.\u00a0 In light of this, the right to exclude must apply to at least low-level airspace under Wyoming law.<\/p>\n

The Checkerboard – Federal Law<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, the court turned to how the federal UIA has overridden Wyoming’s civil trespass law in this situation.<\/p>\n

The UIA<\/em><\/p>\n

The UIA makes inclosures of public lands unlawful, and it prohibits the obstruction of free passage or transit over or through public lands.\u00a0 The court rejected Iron Bar’s argument that it did not “inclose” public lands because it did not fence in the land at issue.\u00a0 The court noted that a fence may be one way to create an inclosure, it was not the only way to do so.\u00a0 Non-physical barriers, such as using no trespassing signs, can also be considered an inclosure under the UIA.<\/p>\n

Checkerboard Case Law<\/em><\/p>\n

Next, the court addressed several cases on checkerboarded land:<\/p>\n