Opinion ID: 1496482
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Utility Code Section 181.082

Text: SBC argues that, notwithstanding this general rule, the statutory permission for it to install a facility ... in a manner that does not inconvenience the public in the use of the road, street, or water, TEX. UTIL.CODE § 181.082, grants it a property interest on which a takings claim may be based. While we have characterized a railroad's interest granted by a local franchise as an easement for taxation purposes, Tex. & Pac. Ry. Co. v. City of El Paso, 126 Tex. 86, 85 S.W.2d 245, 248 (1935), that does not answer whether SBC's interest, arising from section 181.082, gives rise to its compensable takings claim. According to SBC, this statute, originally enacted in 1874, granted telephone companies [i]n effect, ... a private easement. But, as a noted treatise recognizes: The authorization to maintain rails, etc., in a particular part of the highway is not an easement or any other estate or interest in the land so occupied. On the contrary, it is merely a license to share in the public easement, and consequently a corporation maintaining rails, pipes, and wires in a public highway is not entitled to compensation for an invasion under legislative authority of the portion of the highway occupied by its structures. Consequently, this license may not be arbitrarily revoked as long as the highway remains public, and the enjoyment thereof cannot be interfered with for purely private ends. Yet when the continued undisturbed existence of the licensed structure does interfere with some other public need, the disturbance or removal of the structures or an alteration of their location is not a taking or even a damaging of property. The permission to use the highway for such structures has been granted upon an implied condition that the structures shall not interfere, either at the time that they are placed in position or thereafter, with any other public use to which the legislature sees fit to devote the way. When the condition takes effect, the privilege ceases to exist; it is not taken or damaged. To hold otherwise and to say that whenever, under the statutory permission, a gas pipe is laid in a public way the pipe cannot be disturbed, even to make such changes as are required by public travel, is to make what is merely a subordinate use paramount to the great important use for which the land is taken. 2-5 JULIUS L. SACKMAN, NICHOLS ON EMINENT DOMAIN § 5.03[5][e] (3d ed. 2006) (NICHOLS ON EMINENT DOMAIN) (emphasis added and citations omitted); see also W. Union Tel. Co. v. Tarrant County, 450 S.W.2d 763, 765-66 (Tex. Civ.App.-Fort Worth 1970, writ ref'd n.r.e.) (rejecting telegraph company's takings claim, despite the fact that lines had been installed forty-three years earlier pursuant to section 181.082's predecessor; right to use the streets was a permissive right not a vested one, and utility had to bear its own relocation costs). We recognized as much in 1913, when we held that the limiting language in the grant to telephone companies was qualified by this important language, `in such manner as not to incommode the public in the use of such road, streets and waters.' Brownwood v. Brown Tel. & Tel. Co., 106 Tex. 114, 157 S.W. 1163, 1165 (1913). We concluded that [t]he effect of the limiting clause is to declare the right of the public to be superior to the rights granted to the corporation. Id. The main purposes of roads and streets are for travel and transportation, and while public utilities may use such roads and streets for the laying of their telegraph, telephone and water lines, and for other purposes, such uses are subservient to the main uses and purposes of such roads and streets. City of San Antonio v. Bexar Metro. Water Dist., 309 S.W.2d 491, 492 (Tex.Civ. App.-San Antonio 1958, writ ref'd). When a telephone company installs its lines pursuant to the statutory grant, there is an implied condition that the facilities shall not interfere with the public use, either at the time they are placed in position or thereafter. City of Grand Prairie v. Am. Tel. & Tel. Co., 405 F.2d 1144, 1146 (5th Cir.1969) (noting that rule requiring utilities to relocate at their own expense is generally accepted as the prevailing view). SBC asserts that telephone companies are different from other utilities, pointing to section 181.082's silence on relocation costs, and cites other statutes explicitly requiring utilities to pay relocation costs in certain situations. See, e.g., TEX. UTIL. CODE §§ 181.025(b) (relocation of gas facility), 181.046(b) (relocation of electric lines). There are also statutes, however, mandating the converse. See, e.g., TEX. TRANSP. CODE § 227.029( l ) (providing that the department, as part of the cost of the project, shall pay the cost of the relocation... of a public utility facility); id. § 251.103 (providing that a county may pay for relocation of a water line under certain circumstances, provided the water district agrees to repay the funds within twenty years and with interest). Regardless, the statute's silence on relocation costs would mean that the common law rule applied, not that the county was responsible for relocation costs. Moreover, none of our cases supports the distinction SBC proposes. If telephone companies were somehow different, we would not have said in City of Austin a case in which Southwestern Bell Telephone Company was a respondent-that [i]t is clear that respondents could be required to remove at their own expense any installations owned by them and located in public rights of way whenever such relocation is made necessary by highway improvements. City of Austin, 331 S.W.2d at 741. The State, as amicus curiae, contends that Texas law has authorized telegraph and telephone companies to use public roads for 136 years, and never in that time has there been a single decision under section 181.082 (or its predecessors) concluding that such utilities have a right in the public roads that is compensable under the Texas Constitution. Southwestern Bell's contentions, according to the State, would create a newly minted property right. Based on the authorities outlined above, we agree. Under the traditional common-law rulea rule unaltered by section 181.082-SBC would be required to bear its own relocation costs. C