Blanket Easement Court Decisions
Hi everyone. First time posting here I think. I am a PLS in Arkansas, 19 years in the profession, 4 years licensed. Long story short, the local power company recently installed two guy anchors on my personal property (leaving 150′ of ruts and a hammer that my mower didn’t like very much). I have found a blanket easement to said power company from 1984 giving right to “construct, operate, and maintain” lines on the property. The interesting twist is that the pole in question is on the neighboring property. The only pole on my property is near the southwest corner, with the pole in question being about 300′ east (property is 1.2 Ac, approx 120’x430′ W/E). The overhead line crosses my property near the south line for about 100′ before exiting as it runs to the pole in question. Said pole is 15′ south of my line, and per the previous owners testimony, there hasn’t been a guy wire to that pole on my property since 1991. So my question now is how far do blanket easement rights go? My understanding is that it gives the grantee, (I will only be speaking of utility companies, not any other easement rights), the right to lay and maintain the line as it was constructed, and not to expand the area of use or completely reroute the line. This is a bit of a gray area. It is an existing line which they aren’t moving (simply maintaining), yet they are assuming to install new guys that have not been necessary for 30 years. The line is generally straight, running W/E. I spoke with a lineman in the area who supposed that the reasoning was to tighten up the line a bit. Yet tightening the existing guys on the other side of the fence should have sufficed without needing to install two more anchors, one of which isn’t even being used. What I am looking for now is legal precedent or court cases, specifically in Arkansas, which define the extent to which a blanket easement without description conveys rights to utility companies. I am hoping to be able to get them to remove the lines and if I can’t, to at least force them to define the easement specifically and revoke any future blanket rights to the property. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it!
-Justin
- 17 Replies
I was rereading this and realized one of my statements could be confusing. The previous owner said that going back as far as 1991, there has never been a guy to that pole on the property. As far as I can tell, there never has been.
Justin,
You’ve mentioned there is a blanket easement on “the” property. Is that your property?
If it is I may warn you that the courts do not necessarily consider non-use as abandonment. Being as the line is near, but isn’t on your property. My next question is: are you a subscriber of that utility company’s service?
If so, it can get sticky. It would be difficult to argue that you don’t want the utility company on your property yet you depend on them for service. The legal term is estoppel.
Damages are a different argument. Let’s say the blanket easement exists upon your property. Even though a dominant estate (the electric co.) has the right to be there and maintain their appurtenances, it does not have the right to burden a property owner with incidental damages stemming from their actions. Contact the legal department of the utility. They will most likely at least hear you out.
I have worked in utility R/W for a good long time. I have read tons of blanket easements from the ’40s and ’50s that are still in effect today. The power companies I work with are always keen to get rid of those old dinosaurs and correctly define the limits of their granted rights. And anchors are always a big factor and a pain in the butt. The co-op found this out after buying a couple of new combine headers for wheat harvesters because of anchors that ventured outside of the described easement.
good luck
Even if they have an easement I don’t think that gives them the right to trash your yard. Make them come back and fix the ruts, imo.
@paden-cash The blanket easement is written on my property. The legal description matches my deed. Yes, I receive power from them and as you say, that makes it messy. I definitely want them to repair the ruts and will probably be talking to them about the damages to my mower. Also, the point you make about non-use not being abandonment is valid, yet the initial scope of installation did not cover guy wires in that location, so I am trying to see if I can make the case that can’t suddenly come in and expand the area they are wanting to use. I know it isn’t abandoned, but I am hoping that the courts cases will look at blanket easements as conveying an initial right and not being carte-blanche to claim ever expanding rights that impose on the landowner.
@bstrand Definitely! The ruts need to go. They might also be buying me a mower once I look at what the hammer did to it.
… It is an existing line which they aren’t moving (simply maintaining), yet they are assuming to install new guys that have not been necessary for 30 years….
Just because there hasn’t been one doesn’t mean that it isn’t proper for there to be one. Maybe you have just been lucky that the pole hasn’t snapped. I can just hear the outrage when some uppity landowner tells you how to survey. My guess is that they have every right to install that anchor, and a good reason for doing so.
Now, if they chewed up your yard doing it, or left debris around that damaged your mower, that’s a different thing.
The bully concerning utility easements is the powerline people. If they have a blanket easement on your parcel, they can do what they want with impunity except for incidental construction damages. If your parcel is not encumbered but an adjacent one is, they can’t touch your parcel without compensating you. But they can exercise condemnation to force you to accede for a reasonable compensation.
You’re screwed. They have a blanket easement on your parcel.
A common thing is to have a blanket easement that predates the creation of a subdivision thus messing with every lot and the streets and alleys. We have a situation where a full 160 acre tract had a blanket easement for a pipeline in about 1910. No one knows where it is or if it was ever installed. Most of the houses are of the $200,000 plus variety and there are a bunch of them. Every title policy has the warning about that easement.
Wow, where do I get one of these $200k houses? On this side of the continent that would be a burnt out foundation.
I can’t speak for Arkansas. In Oklahoma all public, or quasi-public utility companies operate under state rules (tariffs and statutes) and governed by our Corporation Commission. These tariffs dictate service areas and, in essence, provide specific companies a monopoly on providing their product to the public. But in doing so they have agreed to provide service to anyone in their area.
So let’s say someone wants electric service to their new build site. And maybe the only solution to get them service is to cross private property. In the infancy of rural electric co-ops this was the driving force of obtaining blanket easements. When you agreed to sign up for electricity you simply signed a contract that said you would allow the co-op a blanket easement. Those fared well through the sixties when most providers started attempting to clean up their recorded easements. Most long-standing power lines that aren’t technically within a recorded easement are accepted to be within either an easement by prescription or an easement by implication.
As it stands today there are thousands of miles of power lines that occupy property where there is no record easement per-se, but merely and old service agreement allowing the power company “to be there”. Plenty of these have been legally challenged when a provider ‘upgrades’ a line. In Oklahoma an upgrade of service is considered necessary because of the public’s increased need for electricity. Usually in such a case the utility formalizes a described easement and pays the property owner a fair market consideration, sometimes as indicated by the courts. And dollar-wise they are NOT usually grand amounts.
But let’s say there is no blanket easement on the private property that needs to be crossed by the new line. The co-op is forced to either obtain easement or proceed with condemnation. This places the utility company in a unique position. There is a law requiring them to provide service. And there is a private owner that is stopping them from pursuing that legal goal. For this reason the courts in Oklahoma historically side with the utility simply because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Nobody gets rich selling easements to utility companies.
Damages that occur during construction or maintenance are almost always the responsibility of the utility co. But the property owner is almost always burdened to provide the proof of such damages (photos and repair receipts). I have seen a few law suits where a property owner claims (punitive) damages simply because they didn’t like the way the power company did their work or didn’t like the way it looked. I’ve never seen one prevail.
I do remember one grumpy old wheat farmer that owned around 6000 acres and thought he was King of everything he could see. Most of the section line roads through his property had no utilities at all. The power company came in and ran about three miles of new feeder across his land, but within statutory R/W. The old man howled and bitched and hired lawyers and eventually lost his case. The distribution engineer needed to place a switching array (a number of poles with unsightly equipment) somewhere on the line. The old man had put such a bad taste in the engineer’s mouth the switching equipment was placed right smack dab in front of the farmer’s house.
Moral of the story: you may impede a public utility company’s progress, but you will never stop it.
I recall, in OK, a lot of easements for oil pipeline -the route of which was not described but the easement was to follow a pipe to be installed. The pipe line company paid $10 or $20 for this in the 1930’s, which was probably grocery money for a few months. $20 might be 2 weeks pay in those days, if you had a job at all. If you did, maybe your job was laying oil pipeline. Nobody was growing any crops.
The rub is that all of these contained a clause allowing the company to install another pipe line over said land for the payment of another $10 or $20. No specified route, no stated obligation to follow the route of the original pipe, no time limit. I don’t know if that is ever enforced, or if it could be today.
Each state treats easements differently, and fighting the big utilities can be pointless, but there can be limits to blanket easements. The court can look at them and fix the area based on the original intent of the parties.
Some states disallow blanket easements but later than 1984 when this easement was created.
Going to court over this would no doubt be expensive and probably a loss, however, if you know a good attorney that deals in these types of issues to “chat with” I would surely give it a try. Problem with us surveyors we know too many attorneys so we are always batting this stuff back and forth. Doesn’t cost us anything. At $500 an hour you can skyrocket up a bill quickly.
I deal with utilities so I know who to call and discuss this stuff. I would try and find out who the guy may be to talk too, they don’t like to be the bad guy, they should have contacted you, but they do stand their ground at the end of the day. I would go for some damages, the guy wires you will probably be stuck with cause they are very important to the overhead lines.
@norman-oklahoma
I know what you fellows are talking about. But, I could put you in a lovely home for under $100,000. Lots of them.
Make it where you can then find a nice neighborhood at a far smaller purchase price when you retire. Just please don’t flaunt it. Your neighbors will hate you.
But, I could put you in a lovely home for under $100,000.
All I can say is that there is a reason people are willing to pay $400k for an entry level home in PDX, and $100k buys you a really nice air conditioned enclosure in the Great Plains.
Humans are strange creatures. One person’s paradise is another person’s torture.
I’ve seen half million dollar to million dollar properties in parts of Colorado that I would not move into for love or money. Some of the ugliest scenery in the world and access that requires vicious abuse of some kind of all-terrain form of transportation through sagebrush every day of the year. Not a good place for anyone with medical issues that might require rapid transport to receive aid.
I have seen similarly priced properties on the bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan. No way, Jose. Not if you gave me the house and $100K per year to spend in any form.
Spent some time in one of those very high dollar condos on a very high floor in the heart of Manhattan, New York, New York. Nope. Nope. Nope. Forget it.
Meanwhile, someone else would spend their life savings and what they could get for a healthy kidney just to move into such accommodations.
Different strokes for different folks.
I do remember driving through a neighborhood in Houston years ago where the houses all had astronomical values. Still, some poor schmuck was looked down upon because his mansion was only worth 85 percent of what the mansions around him were worth. Probably hung himself from the shame.
Richard CoryWhenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich ?? yes, richer than a king ??
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
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