Baltimore County v. At & T Corp..

• Decision Date: 20 September 2010
• Docket Number: Case No. 1:04-cv-07014-DFH-TAB
• Citation: 735 F.Supp.2d 1063
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Indiana
• Parties: BALTIMORE COUNTY, Plaintiff, v. AT & T CORPORATION., et al., Defendants.

735 F.Supp.2d 1063

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Plaintiff,

v.AT & T CORPORATION., et al., Defendants.

Case No. 1:04-cv-07014-DFH-TAB.

United States District Court,

S.D. Indiana,

Indianapolis Division.

July 23, 2010.

Order Denying Reconsideration Sept. 20, 2010.

Order on Suggestion of Remand Sept. 20, 2010.

Jeffrey Grant Cook, Baltimore Co. Office of Law, Towson, MD, for Plaintiff.

Douglas Stewart Dove, Timothy E. Hayes & Associates LC, St. Louis, MO, Frances J. Miller, Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky, Washington, DC, James McGinnis Boyers, Wooden & McLaughlin LLP, Indianapolis, IN, for Defendants.

ENTRY ON PENDING MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge Sitting by Designation.

This case is the last contested portion of Multi-District Litigation No. 1313, In re AT & T Corporation Fiber Optic Cable Installation Litigation. The MDL case has managed and resolved claims arising from AT & T's installation of fiber optic cable in the 1980's along railroad corridors with permission from the railroads but without permission from the adjoining landowners. The plaintiffs have been owners of adjoining land who asserted claims against AT & T for trespass, slander of title, and unjust enrichment. The MDL proceeding has provided an umbrella under which the court and parties have resolved state law claims of tens of thousands of landowners adjoining thousands of miles of railroads. Those claims have been resolved through a series of more than 30 statewide class action settlements. None of the landowners have objected to the settlements, under which the owners received substantial cash and AT & T received a clear title to an easement.

This remaining case is based on AT & T's installation of underground fiber optic cable in railway corridors that pass through Baltimore County, Maryland. Baltimore County itself owns twelve parcels of property along one of those railroad lines, now known as the CSX line from Baltimore to Finksburg. As the owner of those parcels, Baltimore County fell within the definition of a nationwide plaintiff class certified by an Indiana state court before the action was removed to federal court in this district.¹

The claims of most Maryland property owners were resolved by a class settlement. Baltimore County exercised its right to opt out of the class settlement, however, and filed its own complaint seeking damages, an injunction, and ejectment against AT & T and an AT & T employeeunder theories of trespass, unjust enrichment, and fraud. See Dkt. No. 17 (Second Amended Complaint). Over the course of this litigation, the County has narrowed its property-based claims to only twelve parcels of land, all of which lie along the CSX Baltimore-to-Finksburg railway corridor. See Dkt. No. 95, ¶ 4; see also Dkt. 104, Exs. A-C (Lathrop Report).²

The defendants have filed several motions for summary judgment. The court has chosen to address them in an order different from the order of filing, but this entry resolves all of the pending motions. In summary, the court grants summary judgment for AT & T regarding four of the twelve disputed parcels. The railroad owns the title in fee simple to one parcel, and the claims arising from the other three parcels were resolved through the class settlement before the County acquired them. The court also grants partial summary judgment for AT & T to bar damages based on the County's franchise ordinance, and the court grants summary judgment for the one individual defendant. The court rejects AT & T's other arguments for summary judgment on the remaining parcels, including theories that the cables are authorized by the railroad easement and that the statute of limitations bars the County's claims. The court will retain jurisdiction of this case for a further brief period to resolve a discovery problem, but will then invite the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation to transfer this case to the District of Maryland for final resolution.³

Standard for Summary Judgment

The purpose of summary judgment is to "pierce the pleadings and to assess the proof in order to see whether there is a genuine need for trial." Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986). Summary judgment must be granted "if the pleadings, the discovery and disclosure materials on file, and any affidavits show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c)(2). The motion should be granted so long as no rational fact finder could return a verdict in favor of the non-moving party. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). When deciding a motion for summary judgment, the court considers those facts that are undisputed and views additional evidence, and all reasonable inferences drawn therefrom, in the light reasonably most favorable to the non-moving party. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c)(2); Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505. However, a party must present more than mere speculation or conjecture to defeat a summary judgment motion. The issue is whether a reasonable jury might rule in favor of the non-moving party based onthe evidence in the record. Id. at 251-52, 106 S.Ct. 2505.

I. The Scope of the Grants to the Railroad (Dkt. No. 121)

The County contends that AT & T trespassed and continues to trespass on parcels of land owned by the County when it installed its underground fiber optic cable in the CSX Baltimore-to-Finksburg corridor. In one of its motions for summary judgment, AT & T argues that the original grantors of eleven of the twelve parcels effectively transferred all of their property interests in the corridor to CSX's predecessor, abandoning their property interests and granting what amounted to a title in fee simple to the railroad. If CSX, as successor in interest to those original land grants, owned the corridor in fee simple, then it had the authority to grant AT & T permission to install the cable. In that case, the County, as merely the owner of the adjoining property, would not have a viable trespass claim based on AT & T's installation of the cable on these eleven properties. In the alternative, AT & T argues that if the original grants created only easements and were not grants in fee simple, the act of installing the cable was still within the scope of the railroad's easement and again could not have amounted to a trespass against the County's property rights. The court finds that CSX had a title in fee simple to only one of the eleven properties. AT & T is entitled to summary judgment on that parcel, but not the other ten. AT & T's installation of the cable is beyond the scope of the original grants of rights-of-way for the railroad.

A. Undisputed Facts

The County has limited its claims to the twelve Parcels identified in the Lathrop Report and its supplements, see Dkt. No. 123, Exs. A-C, prepared by Wendy Lathrop, a surveyor who assisted the County in this suit. Each of these properties is adjacent to the CSX Baltimore-to-Finksburg railroad corridor in Baltimore County. Between 1853 and 1857, a company called the Western Maryland Rail Road Company, CSX's predecessor in interest, acquired interests in eleven of the twelve parcels in granting documents.⁴ Joel Leininger, a Maryland surveyor who assisted AT & T, reviewed the Lathrop Report, examined the deeds pursuant to which the County claims ownership of the Lathrop Parcels, examined the nineteenth-century Western Maryland Rail Road Company granting documents, and examined valuation maps supplied by CSX for the CSX corridor. Dkt. No. 123, Ex. W. ¶¶ 2-5. Leininger correlated the Lathrop Parcels with the adjoining sections of the CSX rail corridor and identified the granting document(s) that corresponded to each Lathrop Parcel. Id., ¶ 6. Leininger prepared a chart showing which Exhibit applies to which Parcel. Dkt. No. 122 at 4-5; Dkt. 123, Ex. W, ¶ 7. The County has not raised a genuine issue of fact as to the accuracy of the chart.⁵ For ease of reference, the court replicates it here in part:

Lathrop

None of the granting documents pertain to Lathrop Parcel 7.

The legal issue of ownership depends on the language used in these key documents. Exhibits R, S, T, and U used the following language, with minor variations:

TO ALL WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, GREETING:

WHEREAS, the General Assembly of Maryland has passed a law incorporating the WESTERN MARYLAND RAIL ROAD COMPANY, for the purpose of opening and making a Road either from the City of Baltimore, or some suitable point on the Northern Central Rail Road [Baltimore and Susquehanna Rail Road], or any branch of the same, to be by the President and Directors of said Company determined, to the town of Westminster, and thence westardly to some point on the Monocacy River, in the direction of Hagerstown:

And whereas, the President and Directors of said Company, aware that the lands lying in the Route that may be selected for the Road will be greatly enhanced in value by the passage of the Road through or near them; and conceiving that the owners of such lands, as an equivalent for that advantage, should relinquish such portions thereof as may be required for the Road, as well as what may be excavated in making the Road, without making any charge upon the said WESTERN MARYLAND RAIL ROAD COMPANY for the same, unless in making the Road any buildings upon the lands should be destroyed, and then only for such sum as upon a fair valuation, to be estimated by disinterested persons, may be determined to be their actual value; and should, moreover, permit stone, gravel, clay and such other materials as may be required for the construction of the Road, and to which otherwise no value would be attached, to be used for that purpose, free of expense, are desirous of ascertaining if theowners of lands lying in the several routes which have been contemplated or may be examined for the

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