Adirondack League Club v. Sierra Club

Adirondack League Club vs. Sierra Club was a court case decided on December 17, 1998, by New York's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, denying the defendants’ motions for summary judgment that the South Branch of the Moose River flowing through Adirondack League Club property was a public highway, but holding that recreational use can be considered in determining if a river is a public highway. The case was sent back to the trial court for additional review. However, the case was settled before there was a final court determination as to whether the river was a public highway. The settlement, which can be found under Appendix 12 of the Moose River Plains Wild Forest Unit Management Plan, allows the public to use the river at certain times of the year and under certain conditions.

Although Adirondack League Club vs. Sierra Club established that recreational use can be considered in determining whether a river is a public highway, in Friends of Thayer Lake, LLC v. Brown, the New York Court of Appeals made it clear that capacity for recreational use alone is not sufficient to prove that a river is a public highway, and sent the case back to the trial court for consideration of "the Waterway's historical and prospective commercial utility, the Waterway's historical accessibility to the public, the relative ease of passage by canoe, the volume of historical travel, and the volume of prospective commercial and recreational use."

Rivers were once important means of transporting commodities such as logs to market, and in the nineteenth century, the New York legislature declared numerous rivers public highways using their power of eminent domain. In contrast to rivers declared public highways by statute, the term "navigable-in-fact" generally refers to rivers of such importance that they are considered public highways under the common law. The Court of Appeals states that "This rule is longstanding and recognizes that some waterways are of such practical utility that private ownership from the time of the original grant from the State or sovereign is subject to an easement for public travel (see, id., at 458)."

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