Chris Waine speaks with Umatilla County Sheriff Terry Rowan as county surveyor Matt Kenney records the location of a trio of supposed property markers on April 23, 2020.

HERMISTON — A lawsuit by Airport Road residents Chris and Monique Waine against Umatilla County and the city of Hermiston continues to move forward after a judge denied the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

The Waines have been in an ongoing dispute with the county over property lines on their home at the corner of Airport and Ott roads outside Hermiston, after the county began planning an overhaul of Airport Road to better accommodate traffic for the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center. The Waines lost a hearing for a temporary injunction against the project in 2020 and it was later completed, adding new pavement and an extra lane.

The case is complicated, touching on more than a century’s worth of surveys, monuments, property descriptions and other records created since the county first established the road in 1907.

“There is a lot of crossover of law, a lot of different layers and a lot of grey areas in the law,” Chris Waine said.

Essentially, the Waines believe that the true Airport Road right of way is about 11 feet north and 5 feet east of where the county says it is, and therefore the road project encroached on their property without compensating them. The county argues that multiple surveys show the strip of land in question has always been the county’s, and the Waines had built their fence and other improvements on county property in error.

Doug Olsen, attorney for Umatilla County, said in an email that the county cannot discuss an ongoing lawsuit. The Waines named the city of Hermiston in the lawsuit as well because the road lies in the city’s urban growth boundary, and city attorney Gary Luisi also said the city declined to comment on ongoing litigation.

In a response to a request by the Waines for the court to grant an injunction against the Airport Road project, Umatilla County responded that all surveys of the corner are in agreement with the county, with the exception of a 1973 survey by David Krumbein, which the county said Krumbein later determined was wrong and corrected in 1980.

“The Northeast corner monumented by the pins set in 1954, 1980 and 1991, is the location being used by the County as the centerline of Airport Road and the road improvement project,” the court document submitted by the county states.

Chris Waine said things aren’t so clear cut, however. For example, the Waines’ memorandum in opposition to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment states that the 1954 survey conducted by James Higgins describes a half-inch-wide steel pin set in the ground as a monument to mark the northeast corner of the property. The document goes on to argue that an iron pipe the county considers to be the Higgins monument is not, in fact, the monument Higgins placed, and does not mark the correct location of the right of way.

The Waines’ lawsuit, filed in March 2020, asks for the title to their land to be cleared of the survey records they believe to be erroneous, a permanent injunction keeping the county off of what the Waines say is their property, an award of “costs and reasonable legal fees” and any other relief the court deems equitable. An emergency injunction halting construction was also requested but was denied last year.

Chris Waine said he’s not trying for a “huge” cash settlement in addition to resolving the issues with the land title, just reimbursement for his family’s ongoing legal costs and for the fence he had to install after the county removed his original fence to complete the paving project.

“I just want to be made whole,” he said.

Waine said he does hope that the entire incident also sparks some reform for Umatilla County and the city of Hermiston. His property isn’t the only one where boundary lines are in question, he said, and those landowners also deserve a clear procedure for resolving issues, such as conflicting surveys or lost monuments.

“It’s kind of a mess and I think the county needs to have a protocol in place,” he said.

After Judge Eva Temple denied the motion for summary judgment on Feb. 19, clearing the way for the lawsuit to proceed in Umatilla County Circuit Court, Waine said both sides are now preparing for a three-day trial scheduled to start July 6, 2021.