Justin Thomas v. Carmeuse Lime & Stone, Incorporated

642 F. App'x 253
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedMarch 30, 2016
Docket15-1446, 15-1447
StatusUnpublished

This text of 642 F. App'x 253 (Justin Thomas v. Carmeuse Lime & Stone, Incorporated) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Justin Thomas v. Carmeuse Lime & Stone, Incorporated, 642 F. App'x 253 (4th Cir. 2016).

Opinion

Vacated in part and affirmed in part by unpublished opinion. Judge DUNCAN wrote the opinion, in which Judge DIAZ and Judge BIGGS joined.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

DUNCAN, Circuit Judge:

This appeal involves a trilateral dispute over approximately 150 acres of limestone-rich land in Botetourt County, Virginia (“the Property”). Plaintiffs-Appellants Justin and Irene Thomas own the surface rights to the Property. Defendants-Ap-pellees Carmeuse Lime & Stone, Inc. (“Carmeuse”) and Thomas M. Helms share ownership of the Property’s mineral estate. 1 The Thomases disagree with Car-meuse and Helms about the extent of their mineral rights and about the extent to which Carmeuse and Helms may disturb the Property’s surface in order to extract the stone underneath. Carmeuse and Helms disagree with each other about what portion of the mineral estate each of them owns.

In ruling on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court decided four specific issues that are before us on appeal. First, the district court declared unenforceable a restriction in an 1849 deed that purports to prohibit the owners of the Property’s mineral estate from quarrying in the vicinity of a historic house and yard on the Property (the so-called “Yard Restriction”). Second, the district court held that Carmeuse and Helms are entitled to use modern quarrying techniques to extract minerals from the Property. Third, the district court held that the mineral estate owned- by Carmeuse and Helms includes all of the stone on the Property, rejecting the Thom-ases’ contention that Carmeuse and Helms own only a particular vein of limestone that runs through the Property’s southwestern portion. Fourth, the district court determined how ownership of the Property’s mineral estate is divided between Carmeuse and Helms.

For the reasons stated below, we vacate the district court’s holding, that the Yard Restriction is unenforceable, and affirm as to the remaining issues.

*256 I.

The Thomases purchased the Property’s surface estate in 2002. At the time, Car-meuse already owned and operated a limestone quarry across the road from the Property. In their pre-purchase investigation, the Thomases discovered that Car-meuse also owned some portion of the Property’s mineral estate, but were told by Carmeuse that it had no immediate plans to do any quarrying on the Property.

An eighteenth-century stone house sits on .the northwestern portion of the Property. The Thomases initially intended to renovate the house so that they could use it as their primary residence. That plan never came to fruition, partly because the Thomases were unable to overcome opposition from Carmeuse to their efforts to have the property rezoned as residential, and partly because, in 2007, the family moved to North Carolina so that Justin Thomas could take a job there. Currently, the Thomases use the Property and the stone house for recreational purposes.

During the decade after the Thomases purchased the Property’s surface estate, Carmeuse’s plans for the Property evolved, and by 2012, Carmeuse had begun preparing to extract the limestone it owned on the Property. Upon learning of Carmeuse’s intentions, the Thomases initiated this lawsuit, seeking several declaratory judgments to clarify the nature of Carmeuse’s rights to the Property. Although the Thomases initially sued only Carmeuse, Helms intervened to protect his interest in the Property’s mineral estate.

II.

The parties’ disputes center on how to interpret deed language from three transactions in the history of the Property’s ownership: (1) the initial severance of the Property’s mineral estate from its surface estate in 1849, (2) the mineral estate’s sale at public auction in 1901 and 1902, and (3) the conveyances of the mineral estate to its current owners, Helms and Carmeuse, in 1992. In this section, for each of those three transactions, we set out the specific language over which the parties disagree, explain the parties’ disagreements, and discuss the district court’s resolution of each.

A.

We discuss first the initial severance of the Property’s mineral estate from its surface estate in 1849. Before 1849, Green-ville B.W. Reynolds owned both mineral and surface rights to a large, contiguous swath of land, of which the Property was a part. In 1849, Reynolds granted to James S. Wilson full rights (surface and mineral) to much of that land. But as to one 200-acre tract (“the Reynolds Tract”), Reynolds retained the surface estate for himself, conveying only the mineral estate to Wilson. The 200-acre Reynolds Tract is essentially the same piece of land as the 150-acre Property; it simply includes an additional 50 acres for which the surface estate was split off at some point before the Thomases purchased the Property’s surface estate in 2002. Carmeuse and Helms are the present owners of the mineral estate underlying the entire Reynolds Tract.

The 1849 deed memorializing the Reynolds-Wilson transaction described the mineral estate conveyed to Wilson as containing “all the stone or rock of every kind, and particularly all limestone, or quarries of limestone, or other kind of stone, in and upon every portion” of the Reynolds Tract. J.A. 244. So that Wilsoh could access that mineral estate, the 1849 deed further granted him “the privilege ... of free ingress, egress, and regress, at all times, to enter and quarry, and take the [stone] *257 away, or to construct kilns and burn the same into lime” on the Reynolds Tract. Id.

The 1849 deed qualified these broad mineral and access rights, however, through several other provisions meant to protect the interests of Reynolds and his heirs in-the surface estate. One of those provisions was what the parties have referred to as the “Yard Restriction,” which reads as follows:

[I]t is also agreed and understood between the parties that the said Wilson, his heirs or assigns, is not to blast, or quarry, or take away, any stone within the enclosure of the yard attached to the said Reynolds’ present dwelling house; this provision is inserted to protect the family of the said Reynolds, and of his heirs or assigns, or other persons who may be in the occupancy of the house, from annoyance.

J.A. 240. It is unclear whether the stone house that currently sits on the Property is the “dwelling house” referred to in the Yard Restriction. It is also unclear how large “the enclosure of the yard attached to” the house was in 1849.

The parties have presented two disputes associated with the 1849 severance deed. First, the parties disagree about the validity of the Yard Restriction. Carmeuse contends that the Yard Restriction is invalid because it irreconcilably conflicts with the 1849 deed’s grant of “all the stone or rock of every kind” underlying the Property, and because the Thomases’ current inability to use the Property for residential purposes renders the Yard Restriction obsolete. The Thomases disagree, arguing that the Yard Restriction is valid and prohibits Carmeuse from quarrying in the vicinity of the stone house that currently sits on the Property.

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642 F. App'x 253, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/justin-thomas-v-carmeuse-lime-stone-incorporated-ca4-2016.