## Facts

- The Red River in Red River Parish, Louisiana, has repeatedly shifted through erosion and sediment deposits, creating bends and later cutting them off.
- Near the Grand Bayou community, the river once flowed around a peninsula associated with Stallings Bend Plantation; over decades the neck of that peninsula narrowed as both sides eroded.
- In 1902, the river broke through the narrow neck, uniting channels and leaving the former horseshoe bend as a cut-off waterbody (an oxbow lake) while the river’s main flow moved eastward.
- The State of Louisiana filed a petitory action against Massie Lee Barbo Bourdon and John Henry Bourdon seeking a judgment recognizing state ownership of the bed of the oxbow lake, described as about 123 acres.
- The State’s theory was that because the Red River is navigable, the bed associated with the cut-off lake should be treated as a public thing owned by the State.
- The Bourdons (private landowners) claimed ownership of the lake bed, asserting that the bed was part of an abandoned river channel subject to private ownership under Louisiana Civil Code article 504 and that they and their ancestors in title had possessed it as owners for more than 30 years.
- The court’s analysis relied heavily on historical surveys and prior litigation concerning the same general river movement, especially *Strohecker v. Robinson*, which described earlier shifts and competing private claims tied to the river’s changing course.
- The trial court rejected the State’s demands and decreed the Bourdons owned the 123-acre lake bed by thirty-year acquisitive prescription; the State appealed to the Louisiana Second Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether the bed of an oxbow lake formed when the Red River cut off a bend and abandoned its former channel is state-owned as the bed of a navigable waterbody, or may be privately owned under Louisiana Civil Code article 504.
2. If the lake bed is susceptible to private ownership, whether the Bourdons’ and their ancestors’ possession established ownership by thirty-year acquisitive prescription.

## Decision

- The Louisiana Second Circuit affirmed the trial court’s judgment recognizing the Bourdons’ ownership of the 123-acre oxbow lake bed.
- The court treated the disputed area as an abandoned riverbed created by a river cutoff that occurred in this century (after 1902), not as a continuing portion of the active bed of the Red River.
- Relying on Civil Code article 504 and jurisprudence including *Dickson v. Sandefur*, *Stephens v. Drake*, and *Verzwyvelt v. Armstrong-Ratterree, Inc.*, the court concluded the former bed could be privately owned under the rules governing a river’s change of course.
- Because the property was not treated as an inalienable public thing, the court allowed acquisitive prescription to operate and left intact the trial court’s finding that the Bourdons had acquired ownership by thirty-year acquisitive prescription.
- The State’s petitory action was rejected; the Louisiana Supreme Court later denied writs.

## Legal Principles

- The State generally owns the beds of navigable rivers as public things, but a change in a river’s course can alter what counts as the river’s bed for ownership purposes.
- Louisiana Civil Code article 504 governs consequences when a river forms a new bed and abandons its former bed; under that rule, the abandoned bed may become subject to private ownership, rather than remaining permanently with the State simply because the river was navigable.
- An oxbow or cut-off lake created when a river abandons a meander can be treated as part of the abandoned bed for purposes of article 504 analysis.
- Public things are not subject to acquisitive prescription; therefore, the classification question (public bed versus abandoned bed susceptible to private ownership) controls whether prescription may run.
- Thirty-year acquisitive prescription can confer ownership when a possessor holds property as owner, openly and without interruption for the prescriptive period; when a trial court finds those facts and the property is capable of private ownership, an appellate court will affirm absent legal error.
- Courts may use historical surveys, plats, and earlier related litigation to reconstruct river movement and determine whether the disputed land is an active riverbed or an abandoned bed.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed that the 123-acre bed of an oxbow lake formed after the Red River cut off a bend and moved eastward could be privately owned under Civil Code article 504, and it upheld the trial court’s decree that the Bourdons acquired the lake bed by thirty-year acquisitive prescription rather than the State owning it as a public riverbed.


State v. Bourdon, 535 So. 2d 1091 (1988)