Polo club victorious in battle over land

Court rules against requiring access

A ruling by a state appeals court on Thursday effectively keeps a rural Marin County property inaccessible to the people who own it.

The dispute involves three properties along San Antonio Creek near the Sonoma County line. One belongs to the Cerro Pampa Polo Club. Another is a ranch belonging to the Gilardi family.

The third, Marin County Parcel No. 125-040-036, is wedged between the other two. It has no direct access to the nearest public roads, San Antonio Road and D Street.

Parcel -036 used to be part of the 350-acre Zimmerman ranch, founded in 1918, according to the appellate ruling. In 1977, the Zimmermans spliced off 25 acres for the use of a son, Fred. That became parcel -036. The family eventually sold off the rest of the property, and it became the polo club.

Fred Zimmerman kept cattle on parcel -036 but lived west of there. He generally accessed the property by driving through the Gilardi ranch. Sometimes he

used a different route that cuts through the polo club’s property.

Zimmerman died in 2006, and other family interests now own shares in the parcel. As they prepared to sell the property, the Gilardi ranch declined to grant them an easement, according to the appellate ruling.

The polo club said it would grant an easement for 25% of the sale proceeds. The parcel owners refused.

The Zimmerman parties sued in Marin Superior

Court in 2016, claiming there was an implied historical easement for access to the public roads. The case went before Judge Roy Chernus, who tried the matter without a jury and visited the site himself.

In May 2018, Chernus ruled that the parcel owners should be granted an easement, saying that without court’s intervention the property would be rendered “absolutely useless.”

“The question becomes what type of easement and over which property,” he wrote.

Chernus ruled against an easement on the Gilardi ranch, partly because, unlike the polo club, it has

never been a part of the Zimmerman property. He mandated an easement on the polo club site.

“Reasonable cooperation between adjoining landowners in order that all parties may enjoy their land is important,” he wrote. “The hardships to defendant Cerro Pampa, LLC are considerably less than the hardships (parcel 36) suffers as a landlocked, unusable parcel.”

The polo club appealed to the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. It argued there was no implied easement and that a vehicle route across the site could cause injuries to horses.

In a decision released

on Thursday, a three-judge panel agreed there was insufficient evidence to support an implied easement. The judges reversed the earlier trial verdict.

Benjamin Graves, a Kentfield lawyer representing the parcel -036 owners, faulted the ruling on several grounds. He said the law required the appeals court to defer to the observations of Chernus, who had actually visited the property.

“Our clients are weighing their options,” Graves said.

Eric McFarland, the San Rafael lawyer for the polo club, said he was “relieved” by the ruling.

“There was a lot at stake

in this case,” he said. “The trial court’s ruling was to put a roadway through the middle of Cerro Pampa’s horse pasture and corral located at the heart of its equestrian operations.”

“The surrounding land floods during the rainy season and becomes a living, breathing wetland during the winter months,” he said. “I’ve been out there after the rains and listened to the frogs sing, so I’m relieved that a roadway will not be going through the middle of it.”

The appeals court said the polo club is entitled to the legal costs of its appeal. McFarland said he has not calculated them yet.