As far as anyone can tell, David Bernolfo didn’t know there was a small, landlocked parcel sandwiched between the 910 Cattle Ranch he bought in 1992 and Salt Lake County.
Brianne Krysiak bought the 23-acre lot in 2016 and six years later sued Bernolfo for access to it, via a “jeep trail” that connects to East Canyon Road.
Soon after, Summit County cut a $55 million deal to preserve the ranch as open space.
Krysiak’s lawsuit claimed she’s entitled to get to her property by way of the 910, otherwise she can’t put it to use.
Third District Judge Richard Mrazik didn’t see it that way in court Nov. 6 and denied Krysiak's claim to an easement.
“This was a super interesting issue. I, honestly, I make this ruling with a maximum of humility,” the judge said. “I could not fairly predict what an appellate court would do.”
The parties were haggling over a decades-old and obscure paper trail of foreclosures and defaulted loans.
At some point — Krysiak’s court papers said either 1978 or 1988 — the 23-acre parcel got separated from the rest of the ranch while it was changing hands.
Now that Bernolfo is selling to Summit County, the county agreed to handle the lawsuit.
What the county pointed out is there wasn’t a handy electronic map of all the land back in 1992, like there is now.
There weren’t parcel numbers back then either. Property was described on paper with physical distances and landmarks — as it had since old England — using “metes and bounds.”
Summit County says Bernolfo couldn’t be expected to notice that 23 acres were missing from a metes-and-bounds description of his ranch. The ranch’s previous owner didn’t tell him about any jeep trail or the parcel when he bought it.
Mrazik ruled that Bernolfo’s interest in his land outweighed Krysiak’s interest in accessing the parcel she bought years later.
“To rule otherwise would create absolute havoc in the state of Utah,” Mrazik said. “It would require purchases of purchasers of property to do an exhaustive title search, and potentially, survey and map analysis; to determine whether there are any landlocked parcels out there somewhere that were, once upon a time, unified with the property that they’re purchasing; and then to eliminate the possibility that … [another interest] still existed or had otherwise been withdrawn by … parties who may be dead, gone, hundreds of years removed.”
Krysiak has 30 days to appeal the ruling after Mrazik issues it in writing.
Summit County has not closed on the 910 Cattle Ranch. That’s been delayed in part because a $40 million federal grant for the project is caught up in the ongoing government shutdown.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW.
