PDF: Land v. Blevins
A Hamilton County Chancery Court judge has made it harder for rock miners to destroy property when harvesting Tennessee mountain stone.
“The mineral owner does not have the right … to extract substances in a manner that would cause serious, long-term interference with the uses of the surface” reasonable landowners expect, according to a ruling Monday by Chancellor Howell Peoples.
The ruling comes in a Sequatchie County case in which the mineral rights owners, George and Faye Land, still have the right to remove rock and stone “by hand and hand tools” from the property of Tracy McDaniel and four others. The Lands also can use a one-ton truck to haul rock and a bulldozer to make a roadway in and out, the chancellor ruled.
Ms. McDaniel there still are many questions unanswered.
“They can’t come in with ‘dozers and dynamite, but who’s going to police what’s a mature tree, what’s changing the contour of the land?” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, moving one rock changes the contour of the land.”
Her attorney, Keith Grant, agreed that there are a few unanswered questions, but said views the ruling as a victory.
“I don’t know that anybody’s going to take stone off with those kind of restrictions,” Mr. Grant said.
Faye Land said she and her husband are pleased with the ruling.
“We’re satisfied if the other party is,” she said. “If anybody wants it, we’ll lease it (the mineral rights) to someone to get the rock out and just pay us per ton (of rock harvested).”
Ms. McDaniel, soon after the case was filed six years ago, summed up her fight to keep heavy machinery from digging up the surface to strip mine for mountain stone – highly prized in fireplaces, patios and walkways – as one of logic.
“They say the rock is a mineral and our deed wrongly states that the surface rights go with the property,” Ms. McDaniel said shortly after the suit was filed. “Well, when you own property, what do you own? The air above the property?”
To decide the case, Chancellor Peoples ordered four days of testimony in November. In his ruling, he borrowed from the 1981 findings of the Tennessee Supreme Court and a 2008 ruling by the Court of Appeals of Tennessee.
The Supreme Court said mineral rights deeds did not intend for “for one party to own the right to use and enjoy the surface of the land and for another party to own the right to completely disrupt that surface.”
The Court of Appeals decision, involving rock mining along the Cumberland Trail on Tennessee state park property said deeds cannot be read as waiving the surface owners’ rights and gave mineral rights owners the burden of proving that a proposed extraction method would not “unduly interfere” with surface owners’ rights.