Court Opinion

ID: 9533195
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:29:23.182164+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:56.586377
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE TRAPP, dissenting: I dissent from the opinion insofar as it finds that the railroad reserved an easement in favor of the defendants in the four quitclaim deeds delivered to plaintiff in May 1979. At that time defendant did not have an easement for its power line upon the railroad right-of-way, but at the most, a license which in essence was revocable at will. No easement from the railroad in favor of the defendant purports to have been created until July 28,1980. If a grantor has actually created an easement in favor of another, his subsequent conveyance to another is declared subject to the easement so granted. Neither the railroad nor the defendant can equitably be permitted to transmogrify a revocable license into a perpetual easement by private transactions more than a year after the conveyances to the plaintiff. An attempt to construe the quitclaim deeds as reserving an easement in the railroad cannot meet scrutiny. There was no purported easement granted to defendant until July 1980. Until the latter date, defendant could only claim a revocable license as against the railroad.