Court Opinion

ID: 9679141
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:42:01.643513+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:10.312920
License: Public Domain

John A. Fogleman, Justice. I respectfully dissent. The majority opinion, based upon the chancellor’s finding that this fixture is a permanent improvement, allows appellant to come upon the land and reclaim it. However equitable this result may seem in this case, it amounts to an overruling of a long standing rule of property, i.e., that permanent fixtures become part of the realty and belong to the owner thereof. See Ozark v. Adams, 73 Ark. 227, 83 S.W. 920. We have held on several occasions, upon a finding that the fixture was a permanent improvement, that it cannot be removed from the land because it has become a part of the realty. DePriest v. Peikert, 211 Ark. 460, 200 S.W. 2d 804; Dent v. Bowers, 166 Ark. 418, 265 S.W. 636; Waldo Fertilizer Works Inc. v. Dickens, 206 Ark. 747, 177 S.W. 2d 398. The cases cited by the majority, except one, all involve situations where equity has granted some sort of remunerative relief to a person who has mistakenly placed a permanent improvement on another’s property. They are not support for the relief granted by the court here. Admittedly Citizens & So. Nat. Bk. v. Modern Homes Const. Co.] 248 S.C. 130, 149 S.E. 2d 326 (1966) allows the removal of improvements where it can be done without substantial damage to the land, but the short answer to this is that it is not the law in Arkansas. In Wallace v. Snow, 197 Ark. 632, 124 S.W. 2d 209, we said, ‘■'Tt is further argued that the court should have allowed him judgment for improvements. In Marlow v. Adams, 24 Ark. 109, it was held that a party in possession of lands who fails to establish his title thereto, cannot be allowed for improvements more than the value of the rents. And in McDonald v. Rankin, 92 Ark. 173, 122 S.W. 88, it was held that at common law the true owner had a right to improvements placed thereon even by a bona fide possessor; but that equity adopted the doctrine requiring the value of permanent improvements placed by a bona fide possessor to be off-set against the rents and profits, whenever the true owner applied to equity for an accounting by the possessor of the rents and profits. In this ease there is no demand by appellees for rents and profits, and appellant cannot recotier for Ms improvements. Not having color of title to the disputed strip of land he cannot claim under the betterment statute. # 4658, Pope’s Digest. See also, Foltz v. Alford, 102 Ark. 191, 143 S.W. 905, Ann. Cas. 1914A, 236.” (Emphasis mine.) T am unable to distinguish the Wallace case from the case at bar. See also Buswell v. Hadfield, 202 Ark. 200, 149 S.W. 2d 555. If it were the rule in Arkansas that the relief the. majority would afford could be successfully asserted against a suit for equitable relief it should have been applied in DePriest v. Peikert, supra; Dent. v. Bowers, supra; Wallace v. Snow, supra, where the claim was asserted in such, an action. Harris. G.J., joins in this dissent.