Groce v. Southern Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 28 January 1932
• Docket Number: 13339.
• Parties: GROCE v. SOUTHERN RY. CO. et al. SAME v. HARDWOOD MFG. CO.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

162 S.E. 425

164 S.C. 427

GROCE v. SOUTHERN RY. CO. et al.

SAME v. HARDWOOD MFG. CO.

No. 13339.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

January 28, 1932

Appeal from Common Pleas Circuit Court of Greenville County; W. H Townsend, Judge.

Actions by W. R. Groce against the Southern Railway Company and another, and by the same plaintiff against the Hardwood Manufacturing Company. From an order granting a motion in each case for a nonsuit, plaintiff appeals.

First case affirmed; second case reversed and remanded.

J Robert Martin, of Greenville, for appellant.

Blythe & Bonham, of Greenville, for respondents.

STABLER J.

We have here two cases brought by the plaintiff, W. R. Groce, for damages alleged to have been sustained by him through trespass on his real estate; the cases having been tried together by consent. It appears that the defendants Southern Railway Company and Atlanta & Charlotte Airline Railway Company entered into an agreement, about February, 1926, with the defendant Hardwood Manufacturing Company by which they granted to the latter the right or license to use a portion of their right of way at Paris, S. C., "as a site or location for the construction, maintenance and operation of a wood working plant for the manufacture of picker sticks and other cotton mill supplies"; and that the hardwood company thereupon erected, wholly or partly on the right of way, a building in which it operated a sawmill and a manufacturing plant, and stored its products pending shipment.

In his complaint in the case against the two railway companies and the hardwood company, the plaintiff alleges that the railway companies, as successors and lessees of the Atlanta & Richmond Airline Railway Company, hold the right of way in question "for railroad purposes" only, under a deed from one Alex McBee, dated February 2, 1871, their interest being only an easement, and that he is the owner of the right of way, subject only to this easement, along with adjacent land; and that the arrangement between the railway companies and the hardwood company and the construction by the latter of its plant on the right of way, over his protest and objection, are not uses "for railroad purposes" and constitute a trespass upon his property. In the complaint in the case against the hardwood company alone, he alleges that a portion of that defendant's plant extends beyond the limit of the railroad right of way onto his property; that that defendant has been using his property for the purpose of driving and parking trucks and cars used in connection with its plant, and has caused great roads to be made through it, rendering the soil unfit for cultivation; and that these acts constitute a trespass upon his property. In the one case he seeks to hold all the defendants liable for the alleged acts of trespass committed on the right of way; while in the other he seeks to hold the hardwood company liable for such alleged acts committed outside the right of way.

At the close of plaintiff's testimony, the Railway companies made a motion for a nonsuit on the grounds, among others, (1) that there was no evidence tending to establish title to the right of way in the plaintiff, and (2) that the evidence was susceptible of no other reasonable inference than that the use of the right of way by them was for railroad purposes. The hardwood company made a motion for a nonsuit on the same grounds, and on the additional ground that the testimony showed that all the buildings of that company were located within the right of way.

The court granted the motion in the first...