Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape

Iron Bar Holdings, LLC (Iron Bar) (plaintiff) owned a large ranch in Wyoming that surrounded several checkerboard parcels of public land with prime elk hunting. To exclude anyone else from hunting on the public lands, Iron Bar installed posts and chains at some checkerboard corners to prevent a practice called corner crossing, which was a method of stepping diagonally across the corners from one public square to another. In 2020, Bradley Cape and two other hunters (collectively, the hunters) (defendants) hunted elk on the public-land squares. The hunters used a GPS-based map and corner crossing to travel to public squares that were completely surrounded by Iron Bar’s property. Although the hunters briefly passed through the airspace above Iron Bar’s property while doing this, they never touched the ground. Iron Bar representatives repeatedly confronted the hunters and told them to leave the public-land areas. Iron Bar also contacted local and federal law enforcement, but the agencies declined to take action. The next year, the hunters returned to the public hunting lands, this time using a ladder to avoid touching Iron Bar’s barriers or land. Iron Bar representatives again harassed the hunters and intentionally disrupted their hunting. Initially, law enforcement again declined to cite the hunters or ask them to leave. Eventually, Iron Bar convinced a local prosecutor to charge the hunters with criminal trespass. A jury later acquitted the hunters of the charge. Iron Bar then sued the hunters in federal court for civil trespass, seeking $9 million in damages. The district court ruled for the hunters, holding that corner crossing without touching or damaging private land was not trespass. Iron Bar appealed.