Ketchum Coal Co. v. District Court of Carbon County

• Decision Date: 22 August 1916
• Docket Number: 2964
• Citation: 159 P. 737,48 Utah 342
• Court: Utah Supreme Court
• Parties: KETCHUM COAL CO. v. DISTRICT COURT OF CARBON COUNTY et al

159 P. 737

48 Utah 342

KETCHUM COAL CO. v. DISTRICT COURT OF CARBON COUNTY et al

No. 2964

Supreme Court of Utah

August 22, 1916

(See 48 Utah 214, 159 P. 541.)

Original application by the Ketchum Coal Company for a peremptory writ of mandate to require Hon. A. H. Christensen, Judge of the District Court of Carbon County, Utah, to vacate an order or judgment dismissing the defendant Pleasant Valley Coal Company from a condemnation action brought by plaintiff against it and other defendants, and to reinstate it as a defendant in such action, and to proceed to try it against all of the defendants.

Peremptory writ of mandate issued requiring the district court to vacate its order for judgment, reinstate the company as a party defendant, and to proceed to try and determine all the issues with regard to title presented by the pleadings of the respective parties, whether legal or equitable and to make such final disposition upon the merits of such issues and to enter such judgment as to it may seem just and proper.

Boyd DeVine & Eccles and Walton & Walton for plaintiff.

Dickson Ellis, Ellis, & Schulder and Van Cott, Allison & Riter for defendants.

FRICK J. STRAUP, C. J., and McCARTY, J., concur.

OPINION

FRICK, J.

This is an original application to this court for a peremptory writ of mandate to require Hon. A. H. Christensen, Judge of the District Court of Carbon County, Utah, to vacate an order or judgment dismissing the defendant Pleasant Valley Coal Company, hereinafter called company, as defendant from a certain action pending in said court wherein the plaintiff in this proceeding is plaintiff, and all of the other defendants above named, including said company, are defendants, and reinstate said company as a defendant in said action, and to proceed to try the same against all of the defendants, including said company. The application was made upon notice duly served upon all of the defendants. All except the Utah Fuel Company have appeared by their respective counsel and have joined in a demurrer to the application, and have also filed an answer to certain portions thereof. For the purposes of this decision it is not necessary to consider anything except the general demurrer which has been argued by respective counsel and the cause duly submitted. Neither is it necessary to make any further reference to the defendant Utah Fuel Company, nor to the answer of the defendants since it presents no issues which affect the result reached by us.

The application is based upon substantially the following facts: Some time in the year 1913, the plaintiff, under the name of Ketchum Coal Company, a corporation, owning a coal mine in Carbon County, Utah, and the applicant in this proceeding, hereinafter styled plaintiff, commenced an action in the District Court of Carbon County against the defendants above named and other defendants to condemn a certain strip of ground to be used for tramway, tunnel, and other purposes in connection with the operation of its coal mine. In July, 1913, an order condemning a certain strip of ground was duly entered by said district court and the plaintiff was given, and took, possession of the strip condemned as aforesaid. During the first half of this year, however, some of the defendants interfered with plaintiff in its right of possession of said strip, and upon applying to the District Court of Carbon County for relief from said interference said court refused to grant the relief demanded and dismissed plaintiff's application. The plaintiff thereupon made an application to this court to require the district court to enforce its order of possession and use of such strip, which application was duly granted. Ketchum Coal Company v. A. H. Christensen, Judge et al., 48 Utah 214, 159 P. 541. In plaintiff's complaint filed in the condemnation proceeding it was alleged that the defendants claimed to own the property sought to be condemned, and it was further alleged that the company claimed to be the owner of certain portions of section 1, township 13 south, range 9 west, particularly describing the subdivisions affected and over a large portion of which lands the strip in question, which is 60 feet wide and 1,300 feet in length, extended. The company answered plaintiff's complaint and in its answer set up various defenses to plaintiff's right to condemn the property, and in connection therewith also claimed title to the strip of ground and to the land over which said strip extended. It also claimed a large amount of damages, both for lands affected and otherwise. It is not necessary to refer to the answers of the other defendants. The plaintiff in due time filed its reply to the company's answer. In the reply the plaintiff sought to meet the defense set up by the company and also explained and denied its claim for damages. The plaintiff also alleged in the reply that since the commencement of the action it had acquired title to the strip of ground in question, setting forth in great detail the source of title, and denied the company's title; and in that connection it also set forth with much particularity the facts assailing the company's title and the reasons why the company did not have title to the strip of ground in question and to the other lands for which it claimed damages. No attack was made upon the reply, and the company proceeded to take the deposition of a certain witness for the purpose of controverting at least some of the facts pleaded in the reply. The case, it seems, was set for trial, but before that time arrived the company filed a motion in which it asked the court to dismiss the condemnation proceedings as against it for the reasons: (1) That the plaintiff was seeking to condemn property to which it had "set up paramount title in itself by virtue of a conveyance" from one who claimed title in fee, and that it claimed that it had acquired all rights to said property by virtue of said conveyance; and (2) for the reason that plaintiff was merely maintaining the action as against the company "for the purpose of attempting to quiet its title to the property sought to be condemned, alleging and claiming that it has paramount title to said property sought to be condemned, and that the defendant Pleasant Valley Coal Company has no title therein or thereto." The district court granted the motion and dismissed the action as against the company, except as to a very small area of ground which was a part of said strip. The dismissal thus excluded from the condemnation proceedings practically the whole strip of ground which had been condemned and of which plaintiff had taken possession pursuant to the order of July, 1913, and upon which it alleges in this application it had expended about $ 40,000 in carrying out the purposes for which it had sought to condemn the same. By excluding the company and the strip of ground from the condemnation proceedings a large portion of the area of ground involved in that action has been eliminated therefrom.

The parties do not agree upon what ground the district court granted the company's motion. The plaintiff has, however, made the court's oral opinion a part of the record in this case. The company disputes that what plaintiff has presented to us correctly reflects what the district court said in passing on the motion, and contends that it does not contain all that was said. We need not concern ourselves with all that the court may have said. Its reasons for dismissing the action against the company are not controlling. The controlling question is whether the dismissal can be sustained in law.

As already pointed out the motion to dismiss was based upon two and two grounds only. All that the court said, as appears from the stenographer's report, is directed to those grounds. From what the court said we are well satisfied that in passing on the motion it based its decision entirely upon the fact that the plaintiff in its reply had set forth that since the action was commenced it had acquired the title to the lands which the company claimed to own, and therefore, as the court said, the "controversy between plaintiff and defendant (company) * * * is purely and simply a question of quieting the title." The court then goes on to enlarge upon its reasons for dismissing the action, and finally concludes that the question concerning the title "should be determined outside of the condemnation suit, and the court so holds." In other portions of the court's oral opinion the same grounds are stated. There cannot be any doubt that the court granted the motion upon the sole ground that the plaintiff had set up in its reply that it had acquired the title to the strip of ground to which the company also claimed title, and that therefore the title to the lands in question was involved. The court then held that all questions affecting title should be determined in another action, and for that reason declined to proceed further in that action except as to those lands to which the plaintiff did not claim title; and as to all lands to which both it and the company claim title the proceeding was dismissed.

The company resists this application upon substantially the following grounds: (1) That mandamus is not the proper remedy; and (2) that the court properly dismissed the action as against the company for the reason that the plaintiff claims title to the strip of ground in question, and therefore the action as between it and the company could proceed only as one to quiet the title to the lands claimed by both, and that a condemnation proceeding may not be converted into an action to quiet title.

Many reasons are urged by counsel why mandamus is not the proper remedy, the principle ones being: (1) That the court acted judicially in dismissing the action against the company;...