## Facts

- Waddell’s lessee brought an ejectment action for roughly 100 acres of land under tidal waters in Raritan Bay near Perth Amboy, New Jersey.
- The dispute centered on exclusive rights to take oysters from fisheries in navigable, tidal waters.
- Waddell claimed an exclusive oyster fishery based on a chain of title traced to proprietary owners of East New Jersey and ultimately to royal charters from Charles II to the Duke of York (1664, 1674).
- The opposing fishermen claimed exclusive rights under New Jersey statutes (including an 1824 enactment) purporting to grant fishery rights in the same area.
- The East Jersey proprietors surrendered governmental powers to the Crown in 1702 while asserting retention of private property rights.
- The circuit court entered judgment for Waddell’s lessee on a special verdict; the fishermen sought Supreme Court review by writ of error.

## Issues

1. Whether the royal charters and subsequent proprietary conveyances transferred the soil under navigable, tidal waters and the oyster fishery as private property capable of exclusive private ownership.
2. Whether ownership of those submerged lands and fisheries remained a sovereign prerogative held for public use and, after independence, vested in New Jersey as successor sovereign.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment for Waddell’s lessee.
- The Court held that the soil under navigable tidal waters and the associated fishery were held by the Crown in a public, sovereign capacity for common use, not as alienable private property.
- Upon the American Revolution, these sovereign interests passed to the State of New Jersey to be held for the benefit of the public.
- Because the proprietary chain of title did not include a private right to exclude others from the fishery, Waddell’s claim to an exclusive oyster fishery failed.

## Legal Principles

- Title to the beds of navigable waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, and public fisheries within them, is held by the sovereign in trust for public use.
- General charter language conveying “rivers, harbours, waters, [and] fishings” is construed, in context, as an incident of governmental authority rather than a grant of private monopolies over public resources.
- Sovereign prerogatives concerning navigable waters and fisheries cannot be retained or conveyed as ordinary private property by colonial proprietors; such prerogatives pass with sovereignty.
- On independence, sovereign ownership of tidal submerged lands and public fisheries vests in the state in its political capacity for the common benefit of its people.

## Conclusion

The Court rejected a claimed exclusive private oyster fishery derived from colonial proprietary title, holding instead that New Jersey, as successor sovereign, owns tidal submerged lands and related fishery rights in trust for public use.


Martin v. Waddell’s Lessee, 41 U.S. 367 (1842)