## Facts

- Carol Severance bought a beachfront lot and house on West Beach, Galveston Island, in 2005.
- At purchase, a public beach-access easement existed only seaward of the vegetation line; no easement burdened the landward portion of the tract.
- Hurricane Rita later shifted the vegetation line landward substantially, leaving Severance’s house seaward of the new vegetation line.
- State officials invoked the Texas Open Beaches Act (OBA), asserted a public easement now covered the house site, and sought removal as an obstruction to public access.
- Severance sued in federal court, alleging the State lacked an easement and that enforcement would violate the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit certified Texas property-law questions to the Texas Supreme Court about whether a public easement can “roll” landward after naturally caused shoreline change.

## Issues

1. Whether Texas law recognizes a public “rolling” beachfront access easement that migrates landward solely with a naturally shifted vegetation line, without proof of prescription, dedication, or customary rights as to the newly burdened land.
2. If such a rolling easement exists, whether it arises from Texas common law or from the OBA’s construction.
3. If such an easement could migrate onto previously unencumbered private land, what compensation (if any) Texas law requires.

## Decision

- The court answered that Texas law does not recognize an inherent, avulsion-based rolling public easement that automatically shifts landward onto previously unburdened West Beach property without proof of an easement by prescription, dedication, or custom.
- The court distinguished gradual, imperceptible shoreline change (under which established easements may move with the beach) from sudden, avulsive events (under which an easement does not relocate onto different land).
- The court concluded the OBA does not itself create new public easements on private property where none are otherwise proven; it operates against the backdrop of existing easement doctrine.
- Because the court rejected automatic migration of an easement onto new land after avulsion, it did not determine a compensation rule for that rejected scenario; any new easement would have to be established through recognized methods.

## Legal Principles

- A public beach-access easement, once established, may shift with gradual and imperceptible changes to the shoreline, tracking the moving boundary of the encumbered area.
- An avulsive event (a sudden, dramatic shift in the vegetation line) does not cause an existing public beach easement to “roll” inland onto other parts of a parcel or onto land not previously subject to the easement.
- The OBA does not automatically impose a new public easement on private land after storm-driven changes; new public easements must be proven under common-law doctrines (e.g., prescription, dedication, custom) or through OBA procedures consistent with those doctrines.
- West Beach private titles were not subject to an inherent, reserved public-use limitation that would justify engrafting a public easement without proof.

## Conclusion

Texas rejected a storm-driven, automatic rolling public beach easement on West Beach and held that public easements move only with gradual shoreline change; after avulsion, the State must prove any new easement under established doctrine rather than treating public access as a preexisting limitation on title.


Severance v. Patterson, 370 S.W.3d 705 (Tex. 2012)