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UP sued by New Mexico landowners over pipelines
A lot of work for lawyers, looks like.
Leave the free market alone.
Sounds like the UP should turn around and sue the states and local governments for a refund of all the property taxes they have paid on the ROW over the years if they didn’t really own, but only had permission to build a railroad on top of it.
The ugly face of extortion rears it’s ugly head again!
As far as property taxes go, look at like the railroad is the tenant with a lease that requires them to pay the property taxes, a common way commercial property is leased. If there is a deed restriction for the railroads to only use the land for railroad use the people suing could have grounds, of course this has been going on for so long I don’t think that the railroads will loose. Of course I am not a lawyer and don’t play one on TV:)
“The railroads were given a no fee interest in the property itself.”
If adjacent property owners had rights to the subsurface land the railroad occupied, Duh, how did they get those rights?
Land grant “no fee interest in the property itself” was hashed out in TRAINS years ago. Alternating sides of the track, sections in exchange for big discounts on rail movement of military logistical necessitys, and by the end of WWII, the discounts far exceeded the land’s worth.
What base is there for claiming by those that bought land grant property claiming improper renting of their, the RR’s, right-of-way?
How is this different from leasing out RoW for fiber optic cabling, or in earlier years SPrint?
Railroads own the ROW from heaven to hell. No exceptions.
Jacob,
Not really. It depends a lot upon the “color of title”. And Indiana is the worst at interpreting that for railroad R/Ws
This pre-dates the current property owners by several generations. Grandfather clause, anyone?
I don’t see my thing here other than ambulance-chaser-type lawyers going after what they see as deep pockets with dollar signs in their eyes. The Plaintiffs ought to be held liable for court costs and the Opposing Counsels’ legal fees if they lose.
If the courts rule in the landowners favor, and if a gold or silver vein is discovered that runs under the railroad’s ROW, I wonder how close to the surface will the miners be allowed to dig . What are the possibilities that the railroad will receive some royalties from theses precious metals ?
The law varies from state to state and past court rulings, but I would suggest the possibility of adverse possession here. The article states that the pipeline has been in place for as much as “four decades”. That’s a long time for no one in the past to make a claim. While the Sprint case was similar, it was also a “new” installation which attracted the property owners and their lawyers.