Despite court ruling, getting cash to heirs creates frustration
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Even a 1,000-mile trip to Vicksburg proved pointless for a landowner trying to get a jury-set payment for an easement for a pipeline across a tract owned by various members of his extended family.
The case of Al Gardner Jr., a financial planner from suburban Detroit, illustrates the frustration of trying to allocate shares to heirs, said Warren County Judge Johnny Price, who declined comment on the specific case.
“Money has been awarded,” said Gardner. “It is there. It’s just ridiculous to require us to go through the steps we’ve been asked to go through.”
Gardner’s 87-year-old father is one of 60 individuals and heirs awarded a judgment in a May 2007 eminent domain case by Gulf South Pipeline LP against landowners along the company’s East Texas to Mississippi Expansion pipeline. The pipeline obtained 60-foot easements for the project. If land titles were clear, payment was made to owners.
But for some tracts, including the Gardner property which the pipeline traverses for nearly a mile of property off Nine Mile Cut Off Road in Bovina, there was no quick or easy settlement. It was one of nine cases in Warren County Court and one of just two where no settlement was reached before a trial.
Based on the case, a check for $17,194.22 is on deposit in the Warren County Circuit Clerk’s Office. “Without a court order, I can’t release funds,” said Circuit Clerk Shelly Ashley-Palmertree, who acknowledged meeting with the Gardners. “I have to have direction on who gets what.”
The Gardners said they’ve pleaded their case with both the county court and circuit clerk’s offices, to no avail.
“Nothing further has happened since we went to the courthouse,” the elder Gardner said. “They haven’t tried to settle it with us by any means.”
Price said all such cases are a problem because so many of them include heirs who are either dead or, as with 11 heirs specified in court documents in the case involving the Gardners, can’t be located.
“It happens any time you have unknown heirs,” Price said, adding the situation happens in eminent domain matters outside of pipelines, such as the old downtown Woolworth, for which the title wasn’t cleared for more than 30 years after an urban renewal effort in the 1970s. “Without (an agreed order), she has no way of knowing who to pay the money to,” Price said.
The Gardners were not represented by counsel in the eminent domain case in which Price ruled. Legal fees involved in a court order for about 100 living people who stand to get a check would be more expensive than the award itself, Gardner said. At this point, it would require each to pay between $1,000 and $1,500, an amount far in excess of any single settlement check, Gardner said.
A year after the Gulf South project, Midcontinent Express came calling for an easement on its pipeline located less than 1,000 feet north of Gulf South’s. Gardner’s father accepted a settlement of about $300 for the second easement.
The only other unsettled land condemnation case in Warren County involving the Gulf South line ended up in the state Supreme Court, which earlier this year upheld a $175,000 jury award appealed by the pipeline company. Eight of nine suits involving Midcontinent settled before trial.
Check amounts aren’t likely to be bigger than what Gardner’s father received. Still, it’s a matter of principle for the family.
“My dad’s 87. It’s only two people left, Dad and his sister,” Gardner said. “This is just some family business that needs to be resolved.”
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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com