Court Opinion

ID: 9828404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:20:28.976834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:47.779960
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Counsel for appellees insistently and plausibly urge that we erred in holding the petition of appellant company insufficient as a basis for a judgment condemning a 100-foot strip of land across appellees’ premises. It is urged that, while appellant’s petition may be insufficient as held, yet its deficiency in description is cured by allegations in the answer of .appellees on original hearing. We originally examined the answer for the purpose of so determining, and have again examined the answer for the same purpose, but, as originally concluded, we yet think that the pleadings as a whole fail to identify and describe a strip of 100 feet with the required certainty. It is true that in the answer there are references from which it appears that appellees construed appellant’s petition as an effort to condemn a strip of land 100 feet wide, but there is no specific allegation that we find to that effect. And appellant’s reply to that answer, as pointed out by us in our original opinion, was a denial that appellant sought any such specific condemnation.
Moreover, if it be said that the proper construction of the pleadings as a whole was sufficient to authorize a judgment condemning a strip 100 feet wide, no such judgment was rendered. The judgment, as stated in our original opinion, follows the description of the land condemned as given in appellant’s petition, to which is added the following words, to wit:
“Together with right to remove from said land all trees and! parts thereof for a distance of 50 feet on each side of a,located center line of the above described transmission line.”
The grant of a right to remove existing trees from the land for a distance of 50 feet on each side of the line described in appellant’s petition fails to constitute any specific grant to thereafter continuously enter and use the strip for other and further purposes necessary to the maintenance of the power) line. It should perhaps be further noted that an examination of the find-, ings and award of the commissioners originally appointed to assess the damages only gives the initial and terminal points of the line, without further description.
It is further insisted that our conclusion in the present case is in conflict with the case of Texas Electric Service Co. v. Wells (Tex. Civ. App.) 8 S.W.(2d) 705. It is urged that the petition in the Wells Case was identical with the one in the present case. We have examined the opinion referred to, but fail to find that the sufficiency of the pleadings or the sufficiency of the judgment was called in question.
On the whole, we think the pleadings and judgment was not sufficiently' specific in its' identification of the land sought to be condemned, and the motion for rehearing will be overruled.