Court Opinion

ID: 9827726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:48:23.540657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:35.393589
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing
Appellee stresses the contention urged in his briefs that the right-of-way for the easement claimed by the defendant over the land in question was too indefinite to warrant.defendant’s claim of right thereunder to remove the three trees in controversy, because in the deeds granting the easement, the course and width of the right-of-way were not specified. In the first place, plaintiff did not object to the admission of those deeds on that ground, or on any other ground. In the absence of any such designatioA in those deeds, the law as against the owners of the land who conveyed the easement, would carry the right in the defendant to select a right-of-way of such course and width as was reasonably necessary for the purpose of maintaining defendant’s transmission lines. And since testimony introduced by plaintiff himself showed conclusively that about the year 1925, after delivery of those deeds, the defendant selected and established its right-of-way across the land, and has maintained the same ever since, all without objection from the land owner, defendant’s right-of-way so selected was thereby established as conclusively as if its course and width had been expressly described in the deeds granting the easement.
Nor did plaintiff plead or offer testimony to show that defendant’s right-of-way at the place where the trees were growing was not reasonably necessary to the enjoyment of the easement; his sole complaint in his pleadings being that the trees were not near enough defendant's transmission wires to require cutting in order to avoid injury to persons or animals from electric shock, and therefore such cutting was done wrongfully and negligently.
Furthermore, in his supplemental petition, in reply to defendant’s answer, plaintiff alleged that more than ten years before the trees were cut, defendant’s right-of-way across the land was fixed and determined by its own selection thereof, and therefore its right to cut them was barred by the four and ten year statutes of limitation. And the facts so alleged in that pleading are asserted in several of appellee’s counter propositions presented here in support of those pleas of limitation.
All of which shows that the case was tried upon the theory that the trees in question were growing on the riglit-of-way lawfully acquired under and by virtue of the deeds noted in our original opinion.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.