Source: http://mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/713558/agriculture+land+law/Unbounded+Interests+The+Limits+Of+Blanket+Easements
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 08:22:06+00:00

Document:
Historically, it was not uncommon for utilities and other infrastructure developers to obtain from landowners blanket easements that allowed improvements to be located anywhere on the subject property. However, as time passes and property changes hands, conflicts may arise between a landowner's plans for their property and the broad rights created by a blanket easement. For example, the landowner may seek to change the use of their property, or the infrastructure owner may try to exercise its blanket easement rights to change the installed facilities or their location. For utilities and other infrastructure easement owners, attempts to limit the broad scope of a blanket easement may stilt their long-enjoyed�and often necessary�use of the land.
States have slowly begun addressing the question of how to balance these interests. Some states disfavor blanket easements and have passed statutes limiting their applicability. Most states refuse to entirely invalidate them, while still recognizing that justice may require limits on easement rights. Such states attempt to fix the easement's location based on one of three inquiries: the original intent of the parties, the area reasonably necessary for use, or the prior use of the parcel. This article examines the application and implications of these trends.
Only a few states either expressly prohibit or explicitly validate blanket easements, and then only in limited circumstances. This section examines each of these approaches.
Some states, like Missouri, Wyoming, and Minnesota, prohibit blanket easements in limited contexts (e.g., those created after a certain date or through condemnation by public utilities). Others, like North Dakota, have passed statutes intended to inhibit blanket easements, but their courts have upheld easements where the parties clearly intended to grant blanket rights.
Under Missouri's condemnation statute, public utility companies can acquire an easement to provide public utility services by condemning private land.2 The statute, however, disallows blanket easements as against public policy. It defines a blanket easement as one created after December 31, 2006, that purports to allow a public utility to locate its facilities at some undefined location on condemned property so that it can access the entire parcel.3 As to easements created before December 31, 2006, the intent of the contracting parties and the language of an express grant control their validity.4 Where a grant clearly identifies a servient parcel and gives a utility company "the right to fully use and enjoy" the land for its public services, the grant creates a valid blanket easement.
Even in North Dakota, where grants must specifically set out the portion of a servient parcel burdened by an easement,10 courts will not invalidate blanket easements that parties intended to create. In Krenz v. XTO Energy, Inc., landowners granted a utility company an easement to construct a pipeline in a surveyed area that comprised several parcels, with the utility expressly given the right to choose where to build.11 The court acknowledged the utility's right to build anywhere within the described area, even though the grant did not designate the pipeline's exact location, because the parties clearly meant to leave the location undetermined at the time of the grant.
1 Law Easements, � 7.4 (2018).
2 Mo. Rev. Stat. � 523.010 (2018).
3 Mo. Rev. Stat. � 523.282 (2018).
4 See Kleinheider v. Phillips Pipe Line Co., 528 F.2d 837, 839, 842 (8th Cir. 1975).
5 Wyo. Stat. Ann. � 34-1-141 (2018).
6 R.C.R., Inc. v. Rainbow Canyon, Inc., 978 P.2d 581, 587 (Wyo. 1999).
7 Minn. Stat. Ann. � 301B.03 (2018).
8 Scherger v. Northern Natural Gas Co., 575 N.W.2d 578, 581 (Minn. 1998).
9 Scherger v. Northern Natural Gas Co., 575 N.W.2d 578, 580-81 (Minn. 1998).
10 N.D. Cent. Code � 47-05-02.1 (2017).
11 Krenz v. XTO Energy, Inc., 890 N.W.2d 222, 232�33 (N.D. 2017).

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