Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in PPL Montana v. Montana. It was a much deserved 9-0 smackdown of the Montana Supreme Court’s ruling that dams operated for decades by PPL Montana and its predecessors were located on land owned by the state of Montana, and that rent, to the tune of $41 million, was in arrears.
On the surface, the case looked like a local dispute turning on technical questions that only a few dozen water lawyers could understand or care about. It centered around the legal definition of navigability for the purpose of determining ownership of lands lying beneath PPL Montana hydroelectric facilities on three Montana rivers. The state of Montana claimed title to the lands and demanded back rent from PPL Montana. The company claimed that the submerged lands in question are owned by the riparian landowner, in most instances the United States, and that it had been paying rent for decades to the U.S. government.
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