Oswego Lake Public Access Lawsuit Appeal: Ruling and Fees

The Oswego Lake public access lawsuit is on appeal at the Oregon Court of Appeals, but the lake itself remains open to the public at Millennium Plaza Park while those appeals move through briefing. The Lake Oswego Corporation is challenging the March 2025 trial court ruling that declared the lake a public waterway, and all three defendants — the corporation, the City of Lake Oswego, and the State of Oregon — are separately appealing a $1.5 million attorney fee award entered in June 2025.

Is the Lake Open During the Appeal?

Yes. The city has stated that the pending appeal does not change its obligation to comply with the trial court’s order, and public access at Millennium Plaza Park has continued since shortly after the March 2025 ruling.¹

Access runs through a single designated entry and exit point: the concrete platforms at Lower Millennium Plaza Park. The city’s rules allow non-motorized watercraft up to 18 feet in length only. No motorboats or personal watercraft are permitted. Hours run from one hour before sunrise to one hour after sunset, and anyone entering the water must have a swim buoy or life vest. The city hired a seasonal park ranger for on-site enforcement and installed a temporary kiosk with free loaner life jackets. Exclusionary signage and certain physical barriers have been removed from the site.¹

Access from the city’s other two waterfront parks, Sundeleaf Plaza and Headlee Walkway, was not ordered by the court and is not part of the current public access framework.²

Who Is Appealing, and What Each Appeal Challenges

There are two separate appeals, filed on parallel tracks at the Oregon Court of Appeals.

The Lake Corporation’s Appeal of the Access Ruling

The Lake Oswego Corporation filed a notice of appeal challenging Judge Kathie Steele’s ruling that the lake is a public waterway and that the city must provide access at Millennium Plaza Park. The case number is A186973.³ The corporation has argued the lake should remain private and has raised concerns about safety, congestion, and the lack of regulations for public users.⁴

The City of Lake Oswego declined to join this appeal. On March 31, 2025, the City Council voted 5-2 against appealing, with Mayor Joe Buck, Council President Trudy Corrigan, and Councilors Massene Mboup, Rachel Verdick, and Ali Afghan in the majority, and Councilors Aaron Rapf and John Wendland dissenting. The majority relied on the city attorney’s assessment that an appeal had a “very low” chance of success. Councilor Mboup said legal counsel had advised, “if you appeal you’re going to lose.”⁵⁶

An amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs has been filed by 36 law professors and Willamette Riverkeeper.⁷

The Three-Defendant Appeal of the Attorney Fees

In June 2025, Judge Steele ordered the three defendants to pay more than $1.5 million in attorney fees to plaintiffs Mark Kramer and Todd Prager. The fees were apportioned 45% to the Lake Oswego Corporation, 35% to the City of Lake Oswego, and 20% to the State of Oregon. The judge acknowledged the amount was “certainly large” but found all three defendants bore responsibility because their past actions had kept the lake private and prolonged the litigation for over a decade.⁸

All three defendants appealed. The state filed its notice in July 2025, the Lake Corporation in July 2025, and the city in August 2025. Each defendant has blamed the others. The state argued the case “was not fought against the State nor was the victory they secured against the State.” The city countered that the state “abdicated its responsibility over issues of navigability.” Judge Steele’s order noted the state had actually supported the city’s position against public access before the 2019 Oregon Supreme Court ruling.⁸ The city’s appeal is case number A188385.⁹

Where the Appeals Stand

Both appeals are in early stages. As of June 2026, the Court of Appeals had granted the Lake Oswego Corporation an extension of time to file its opening brief in the merits appeal, and no oral arguments had been scheduled.³ The city’s fee appeal has also seen multiple extensions, with the most recent granted in June 2026.⁹

Payment of the fees is stayed pending the outcome of the merits appeal. If the Court of Appeals reverses the underlying public access ruling, the fee obligation could be eliminated entirely.¹⁰

What Could Change if the Appeal Succeeds

A reversal on the merits would undo both the trial court’s finding that the lake is a public waterway and the order requiring access at Millennium Plaza Park. It would also, as noted above, likely eliminate the $1.5 million fee award tied to that outcome.

A reversal limited to the fee ruling would leave public access in place but could shift or reduce what the defendants owe the plaintiffs’ legal team. The plaintiffs’ attorneys handled the case pro bono through the trial court proceedings.¹¹

If the Court of Appeals affirms, the current access framework at Millennium Plaza Park stays in place and the fee award becomes payable. Nothing in the trial court’s judgment required opening Sundeleaf Plaza or Headlee Walkway, so an affirmance would not expand access to those parks.²

What the Appeal Is Challenging

The ruling now on appeal is the final judgment Judge Steele issued on March 4, 2025, in Kramer v. City of Lake Oswego, a case filed in 2012. It found that the city’s Resolution 12-12 and related policies prohibiting public access from Millennium Plaza Park were “unlawful and invalid” and represented an “unreasonable restriction on the public’s right of access.” The city was ordered to allow immediate public access and to remove boulders, metal reeds, “Private Lake” signs, “No Trespassing” signs, and other obstructions within 120 days.¹²⁶

That judgment combined findings from two trial phases. In the first, Judge Ann Lininger ruled in May 2022 that the original Sucker Lake portion of the lake was “title-navigable” at Oregon’s 1859 statehood and that all waters of the expanded lake are subject to the public trust doctrine. Evidence included Indigenous canoe use and 19th-century commercial activity such as a sternwheeler hauling logs.¹³² The Lake Oswego Corporation contested those findings, particularly the inclusion of Lakewood Bay, which it argued was created artificially in 1928 and did not exist at statehood.

In the second phase, held in April 2024 before Judge Steele, an advisory jury found on April 19, 2024 that there was “no reasonable basis to restrict public access at Millennium Plaza Park.” The jury also rejected the city’s argument that water quality concerns justified the ban.¹⁴¹²

The legal foundation for public access traces back to the Oregon Supreme Court’s unanimous August 2019 decision in the same case, which held that the public trust doctrine can extend to uplands adjacent to navigable waters when necessary to access those waters. That decision sent the case back to the trial court to determine whether Oswego Lake is navigable under the federal test, which asks whether a body of water was suitable for commercial trade or transport at the time of statehood in 1859.¹⁵¹⁶

The city spent approximately $750,000 in taxpayer funds defending the access ban between 2012 and early 2024, and the Lake Oswego Corporation spent considerably more.⁵¹⁷

1
City of Lake Oswego. Oswego Lake
2
KATU. Oswego Lake Ruling
3
Oregon Courts. Case A186973
4
Willamette Week. Homeowners Appeal Oswego Lake Opening, Ask City Council to Join Them
5
Lake Oswego Review. Lake Oswego City Council Votes Against Joining Appeal of Oswego Lake Ruling
6
OPB. Lake Oswego City Council Declines to Appeal Public Access Ruling
7
Lewis & Clark Law School. Amicus Brief Filed in Kramer and Prager v. City of Lake Oswego
8
KOIN. Defendants in Oswego Lake Public Access Case Challenge Order to Pay Legal Fees
9
Oregon Courts. Case A188385
10
Lake Oswego Review. Lake Oswego Appealing Fee Judgment in Oswego Lake Public Access Case
11
OPB. Lake Oswego Public
12
KATU. Judge Rules Lake Oswego Must Allow Public Access to Oswego Lake
13
Lake Oswego Review. Corporation Objects to Conclusions Reached in Oswego Lake Case
14
KOIN. Jury’s Decision Lays Groundwork for Oswego Lake Opening Up to the Public
15
FindLaw. Kramer v. City of Lake Oswego
16
Lewis & Clark Law School. Oswego Lake and the Public Trust Doctrine
17
Willamette Week. Todd Prager Fought to Liberate Oswego Lake — and Won