POINT CLEAR, Alabama — People will have a harder time walking a scenic boardwalk along the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay after access was blocked this week to one stretch of it.

Keeping the public boardwalk open in Point Clear was required by an Alabama Supreme Court decision two years ago. But this past week someone has boarded up the opening in a fence on the north side of Zundel Road that allowed public access to the walkway.

One stretch of that so-called “boardwalk”—part boardwalk, part sidewalk, part grassy trail—crosses in front of the house of Eleanore K. Allison, the defendant in the lawsuit filed four years ago by nearby resident Albert Key.

After Hurricane Ivan damaged her pier and the concrete sidewalk in 2004, Key says a fence Allison constructed hindered public access to the boardwalk.

Allison’s property borders Zundel Road, a short gravel road that runs a few hundred feet west from Scenic Highway 98 to a small public beach and popular fishing spot.

Allison’s bay-front property is part of the boardwalk that stretches for over a mile from the Grand Hotel Marriott Resort, Golf Club and Spa to Zundel Road.

The blocking of the boardwalk there was at the center of the Albert Key v. Eleanore K. Allison lawsuit. The state high court decision in 2010 ruled in Key’s favor, stating the public should have access to the walkway because access has been unhindered for nearly 100 years—classifying the boardwalk as a public “easement.”

After the decision, some planks were removed from the fence to allow public access, but in the past two days someone has boarded up that spot, says Jerry Bernhardt.

Bernhardt walks the boardwalk regularly and was able to gain access through the fence as late as Thursday, May 31.

Four planks of wood appear to have been added to the fence late this week. The planks are clearly newer and fresher than those around them.

“You can see the nails come from the other side of the fence, and it wasn’t there yesterday,” Bernhardt said Friday.

Allison declined to comment on the recent addition to the fence.

The original lawsuit was filed against Allison in 2008, with a Baldwin County Circuit Court judge ruling in her favor. But Key and his lawyer, Taylor “Red” Wilkins, appealed.

The State Supreme Court heard the case in October 2010 and reversed the lower court’s decision.

“I thought she took the fence down,” Wilkins said Friday.

Wilkins said she doesn’t have a right to fence off access to the walkway. He noted the issue should be handled through the courts without law enforcement intervention.

Local fisherman Joseph Moore, at Zundel Beach Friday, says a fence there pre-dated Hurricane Ivan, but Allison replaced it in such a way that it blocked access to the boardwalk after the storm.

“Everybody signed a petition, and it’s supposed to have been moved back,” Moore said. “The public walkway is still supposed to be there. We should still be able to walk, but she’s got it blocked off.

“I was talking to two older women who were raised down here,” Moore said. “I talked to them four or five months ago, and they told me that it went through the Supreme Court and all, and we beat it.

“But’s it still there.”

Court documents say John Brodbeck, a then 83-year-old resident of Point Clear, testified “that the boardwalk had been in existence and used by the public for as long as he could remember.

“Most people along there invited you to walk the boardwalk,” Brodbeck told the courtroom. “They were proud of it.”

Key told the court the boardwalk had existed for over 100 years. The Alabama Supreme Court acknowledged the boardwalk as an “easement” which is “created when the public … uses an open, defined roadway for an uninterrupted period of 20 years or more without objection or hindrance from the landowner.”

As part of the remedy in the successful lawsuit against Allison, a gate was suggested instead of just taking down a few planks, but that never happened. For now, even that step-through access has been blocked, with the sharp ends of large nails visible through the recently hobbled together planks, which have closed off easy access to the boardwalk through the fence along Allison’s property.

“The Supreme Court has already ruled that it’s a public walkway along there,” Wilkins said. “We’ll have to file some type of contempt citation against her.”