Young v. Tennessee Gas & Transmission Co.

367 S.W.2d 270, 1963 Ky. LEXIS 21
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedApril 26, 1963
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 367 S.W.2d 270 (Young v. Tennessee Gas & Transmission Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Young v. Tennessee Gas & Transmission Co., 367 S.W.2d 270, 1963 Ky. LEXIS 21 (Ky. Ct. App. 1963).

Opinion

CULLEN, Commissioner.

The appeal is by landowners from a judgment which determined and awarded to them compensation for the condemnation of .a pipeline easement across their lands, and which rejected their application for a mandatory injunction requiring .removal of •the pipe line from their lands.

The principal difficulties in the case arise from the fact that when the appellee, Tennessee Gas and Transmission Company, ■commenced its condemnation proceedings, it had failed to discover that Mrs. Carrie Myers was an owner of part of the land over which the pipe line was to run, and therefore did not include her as a party.

Claude Young and wife owned two parcels of farm land, separated by a triangular-shaped • parcel owned by Mrs. Young .and her mother, Mrs. Myers. (An adjoining parcel owned solely by Mrs. Myers also is involved, but it will be discussed separately at a later point in this opinion.) The pipe line was to run across the southern Young parcel, then on across the triangular parcel and the northern Young parcel.

Believing that Young and wife owned all three parcels, the gas company named them only as parties in the county court. The commissioners made an award of $20,-270. Young and wife questioned the right of the company to condemn, and the county court entered judgment holding that the company did not have the right to condemn (on the ground that the company had not undertaken to negotiate with the Youngs). The company appealed to the circuit court, and after a hearing the circuit court ruled that the company did have the right to condemn, and entered an order authorizing the company to take possession upon paying to the Youngs or to the clerk of the court the amount awarded by the commissioners. (The Youngs refused to accept the money and it was deposited with the clerk.) The company and the Youngs then each filed exceptions to the commissioners’ award.

The company then began construction of the pipe line across the southern Young parcel. When the workers were about to enter upon the triangular parcel the Youngs, claiming to act as agents of Mrs. Myers, stopped the workers and asserted for the first time Mrs. Myers’ ownership in the triangular parcel. Three days elapsed during which the company attempted to work out a settlement with Mrs. Myers. Then, on June 18, 1959, the company obtained from the circuit court, on an ex parte motion, a restraining order against the Youngs and Mrs. Myers, prohibiting them from interfering with ■ the construction of the pipe • line. On the same day the company ob[272]*272tained an order making Mrs. Myers a party to the condemnation suit and caused a summons to be issued against her (which was served the following day). That night the company moved its equipment onto the triangular parcel and proceeded thereafter to complete construction of the pipe line across that parcel and the rest of the Young land. A motion by the Youngs and Mrs. Myers to dissolve the restraining order was overruled and the order was transformed into a temporary injunction (which later was upheld on proceedings in this Court).

Thereafter Mrs. Myers filed a counterclaim in the condemnation suit seeking a mandatory injunction requiring the company to remove its pipe line from her land, and also filed exceptions to the commissioners’ award.

In May 1960 the circuit court entered a summary judgment dismissing Mrs. Myers’ counterclaim. This judgment recited that the amount of the commissioners’ award theretofore paid to the clerk of the court was being held for all of the landowners, including Mrs. Myers, and further recited that the original order of possession authorizing the company to take possession of the easement, “including the portion of same owned by * * * Carrie Myers,” was affirmed.

Later the case was tried before a jury in the circuit court on the exceptions to the commissioners’ award, resulting in a verdict and judgment awarding $4,000 damages to the two Young parcels and $410 damages to the Mrs. Young-Mrs. Myers parcel. The Youngs and Mrs. Myers accepted payment of these amounts and then took the present appeal. (The appeal is from the summary judgment also, because it was not made final under CR 54.02 when it was entered.)

The first contention of the appellants is that the summary judgment was erroneous; that Mrs. Myers was entitled to a mandatory injunction requiring removal of the pipe line from her land because an easement across her land never was validly condemned; and that an easement cannot be condemned by an ex parte restraining order.

It is true that at the time the company entered upon Mrs. Myers’ land it had no right to do so, because she had not then been made a party to the condemnation proceeding. But the very next day summons was served on her and she did become a party. Perhaps according to pure technicalities the company should have been required to commence the proceedings anew in the county court and should not have been permitted to take possession of Mrs. Myers’ land until in such new proceedings an order of possession had been entered. However, she suffered no real prejudice from being brought into the suit for the first time at the circuit court level. The only thing she could have litigated in the county court was the right of the company to condemn, which could be relitigated in the circuit court. She could not have raised in the county court any question as to the amount of compensation. Since the comr missioners 'in the county court returned an award for what they thought the damages were to the land affected by the easement, without regard to divided ownership, the amount paid into court by the company pursuant to the award was adequate to protect her interest in ;the land.

It seems to us that the only wrong inflicted upon Mrs. Myers was a temporary trespass by the company between the time the company entered upon her land and the time she was made a party in the circuit court. She did not elect to seek damages for the temporary trespass, but instead sought to oust the company from- her land. But at the time she sought the ouster she was a party to the condemnation suit, money was in the hands of the clerk to protect her interests, and all of the processes of the circuit court were available to her to secure fair compensation for the permanent taking of her property. In our opinion there was a substantial compliance with the condemnation statutes as to Mrs. Myers, [273]*273so the argument that her land was taken by a restraining order and not by condemnation has no merit.

The cases relied upon by Mrs. Myers are not controlling because they all involved situations where land was taken without any attempt to condemn. In the instant case the company was at all times attempting in good faith to effect a valid condemnation, and only by inadvertence failed to make Mrs. Myers a party in the county court.

Since Mrs. Myers was seeking equitable relief from the court, in the form of an injunction, certainly the court was entitled to consider the equities of the situation. All of the equities here are on the side of the company. So even if it were to be considered that there was a taking of Mrs. Myers’ property by the company without a strictly valid condemnation, equity would not require the company to remove its pipe line. See Bartman v. Shobe, Ky., 353 S.W.2d 550; Faulkner v. Lloyd, Ky., 253 S.W.2d 972.

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Bluebook (online)
367 S.W.2d 270, 1963 Ky. LEXIS 21, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/young-v-tennessee-gas-transmission-co-kyctapp-1963.