Court Opinion

ID: 9856669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:54:59.537933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:40:20.771343
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
Defendants’ predecessors-in-interest, Earl and Darlene Clark, 37 years ago owned Lots 1 and 2 in Section 19, Township 5 North, Range 2 West, B. M., County of Canyon, State of Idaho.
On a printed form entitled Right Of Way Contract, for a recited consideration of Ten Dollars ($10.00) cash and $1.00 per lineal rod to be paid, the Clarks executed and acknowledged that they thereby did “grant and convey unto PACIFIC NORTHWEST PIPELINE CORPORATION, a Delaware corporation, its successors and assigns, hereinafter referred to as Grantee, the right to select the route for and construct, maintain, inspect, operate, protect, repair, replace, alter or remove a pipeline or pipelines for the transportation of oil, gas and the products thereof, on, over and through” their said parcel above described.
The pipeline was installed, but whether it, like Topsy, just grew laterally across the property is not divulged by the record. The right to select the route, however, by the terms of the Contract entailed also the obligation to first survey the route, and inferentially disclose it to the Clarks, who were then to be paid the additional compensation of $1.00 per lineal rod:
“Grantee agrees that after it has completed its survey of the route for its pipeline and has established the route thereof and before pipeline construction is commenced, it will pay Grantors, in proportion to Grantors’ respective interests, a total sum equivalent to One ($1.00) Dollar per lineal rod of pipeline so surveyed and established.”
In my view the Right Of Way Contract went no further than identifying the parcel across which the Clarks would allow an easement to be taken, when and if the easement was identified by selection and survey. To constitute a lineal easement, it ordinarily would have necessitated a center line and so many feet on either side thereof. To constitute a permanent easement re*184quired a survey, and the survey would necessarily have to have been recorded, with reference to the Right of Way Contract, by book and page number, or otherwise have been entirely sufficient of itself. Only in such a manner would the subsequent purchasers of the property be bound. Nothing in this record shows that these proper steps were taken.
Obviously, the pipe in the ground for over three decades will likely remain there on the principle of prescriptive easements, flowing out of a permissive, unopposed and compensated entry.