Opinion ID: 3152383
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Other Factual Considerations

Text: The third part of the certified question asks whether “factual considerations—such as whether a railroad surveys property, or lays track and begins to operate trains prior to the conveyance of a deed, limit the railroad’s interest in the property.” Rogers III, slip op. at 5. Subsection (1) of the railroad and canal statute quoted above provided as follows: Every railroad and canal company shall be empowered: (1) To cause such examinations and surveys for the proposed railroad or canal to be made as shall be necessary for the selection of the most advantageous route, and for such purposes by its officers, agents and servants to enter upon the lands or water of any person for that purpose. Thus the railroad company was authorized to enter upon private land for the purpose of conducting surveys to determine the best route for the railroad. - 22 - Appellants seek support in Preseault v. United States, 100 F.3d 1525 (Fed. Cir. 1996), for the argument that surveying the land and locating the corridor for the railroad gave the process of purchasing the rights of way an “eminent domain flavor.” Id. at 1537. The suggestion, based on Preseault, is that the element of potential coercion from the possibility of condemnation should lead a court to conclude that the railroad’s resulting interest in the property is only an easement, assuming an easement is the most the railroad could have obtained by condemnation. Preseault was grounded on the Court of Appeals’ conclusions about state law. Id. at 1534. However, where state law does not “treat, as conveying an easement, rather than a fee, a deed that conveyed all right, title and interest of the grantor,” the outcome will be different. Burgess v. United States, 109 Fed. Cl. 223, 233 (Fed. Cl. 2013) (citing Lowers v. United States, 663 N.W.2d 408, 410 (Iowa 2003), for its refusal to “[d]etermin[e] the nature of the interest conveyed by reference to the intended use by the grantee.”). In Holland v. State, 388 So. 2d 1080 (Fla. 1st DCA 1980), a grantor sold land to the State for a negotiated price for a highway right of way, conveying fee simple title by warranty deed in statutory form. The court held that the grantor could not later claim that the State did not obtain subsurface rights on the ground that there would have been no necessity for the State to obtain the subsurface rights in a taking by eminent domain. “The time for appellants to have declined - 23 - voluntary relinquishment of subsurface mineral rights was when the fee simple sale was bargained and consummated, averting condemnation proceedings in which appellants might have challenged the public necessity for the taking.” Id. at 1082. Similarly, the fact that a railroad endowed by the State with the power of eminent domain might not have been able to show a necessity of taking more than an easement does not provide a basis for questioning the effect of an unambiguous deed that was sufficient on its face to convey fee simple title. We therefore conclude that the fact that the railroad company surveyed property that it did not own and located a route for its railroad before acquiring title to it did not affect the nature or quality of the property interest the railroad received under the deeds that were executed later. The record shows that the four deeds that conveyed property used for the northern part of the route were executed before the tracks were laid. Thus the question about running trains before the conveyance is not involved. The southern part of the route was relocated in the mid-1920s. Trains were running on the southern part of the route at the time of the 1927 deed from B.L.E. Realty. The opinion of the Court of Federal Claims explains the complicated history of the parcels of land conveyed to Seaboard by the 1927 B.L.E. Realty deed. See Rogers I, 93 Fed. Cl. at 612-16. There is no need for us to explain the events that led to the railroad operating on those tracks before it had secured title to the right - 24 - of way. Appellants have not cited any source of statutory or decisional law applicable in Florida that supports their argument that a deed meeting all the formal requisites for passing fee simple title is rendered invalid or is limited in its effect by the fact that the grantee is already occupying the property. When a deed is unambiguous and sufficient on its face to show the grantor’s intent as to the property described and the estate conveyed, extrinsic evidence is not admissible to vary the terms. See, e.g., Fla. Moss Prods. Co. v. City of Leesburg, 112 So. 572 (Fla. 1927); Mason v. Roser, 588 So. 2d 622 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991). We answer the third part of the certified question by holding that the factual considerations referred to in the certified question do not limit the railroad’s interest in the property regardless of the language of the deeds.