R. C. Acres, Inc. v. Mommies Props., LLC.

• Citation: 338 Ga.App. 569,790 S.E.2d 824
• Decision Date: 07 September 2016
• Docket Number: A16A0885
• Parties: R. C. Acres, Inc. v. Mommies Properties, LLC. et al.
• Court: United States Court of Appeals (Georgia)

338 Ga.App. 569

790 S.E.2d 824

R. C. Acres, Inc.

v.Mommies Properties, LLC. et al.

A16A0885

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

September 7, 2016

Mary Diane Owens, Anandhi Soundara Rajan, Bradley S. Wolff, Atlanta, for Appellant.

Michael J. Bowers, Jennifer Houser Chapin, Atlanta, Jennifer Dorminey Herzog, Anthony Ashley Rowell, Tifton, James Stuart Teague Jr., Michael Jordan Lober, Roswell, Larry C. Oldham, Keisha Leigh Martin Chambless, Cumming, Vinay Bose, for Appellee.

Barnes

, Presiding Judge.

This is the second appearance of this case involving a dispute as to the location of Appellant R.C. Acres, Inc.'s easement of ingress and egress over real property owned by Appellees Mommies Properties, LLC and Vinay Bose (collectively, the “M.P. defendants”).¹ At issue in the present appeal is whether the trial court amended the judgment to specify the ultimate location of the easement in a manner that conformed to the jury's verdict and the evidence presented at trial, as this Court in the prior appeal instructed the trial court to do on remand. See R.C. Acres, Inc. v. Cambridge Faire Properties, LLC , 331 Ga.App. 762, 769–770, 771 S.E.2d 444 (2015)

(“R.C. Acres I ”). Because the trial court amended the judgment on remand in a manner that did not conform to the reasonable intendment of the jury's verdict and the trial evidence, we must reverse the amended judgment and remand for further action consistent with this opinion.

We summarized the relevant trial evidence in R.C. Acres I

:

At trial, R.C. presented testimony that it owns a parcel of property on the Chattahoochee River in Forsyth County. The parcel is landlocked, and was originally part of a larger tract of land with access to a nearby highway, owned by the Rives Corporation (“Rives”) at the time R.C. acquired its parcel from Rives, but later divided into two tracts and conveyed to others. One tract was [ultimately] transferred to [Cambridge Faire Properties LLC, and White Repair & Contracting Co. (collectively, the “Cambridge defendants”) ]; the other was developed as an equestrian property by an intermediate owner, Silver Creek Development, and eventually transferred to M.P. defendants Mommies Properties and Bose.

At the time of the sale to R.C. in 1985, Rives granted “a sixty foot wide easement which runs parallel to the south boundary line” of the property. The deed did not describe the easement location in more detail; instead, it explicitly provided: “a relocated easement of ingress and egress will be obtained between the parties hereto, their respective heirs and assigns subsequent to the date of this conveyance.” A Rives officer testified that this agreement was made so that the parties involved could later agree upon a mutually convenient location.

A major issue at trial was whether the easement was relocated by agreement between the parties or their predecessors in title. While the M.P. defendants contend the evidence showed that the easement was never relocated with respect to their property, citing portions of the record, R.C. points to evidence in the record, including surveys, deeds, and testimony, showing that the easement was relocated by agreement to an existing roadway on the property, known as “Woods Road” or “Old Woods Road.” Testimony was presented that this route was used from R.C.'s acquisition of the property in 1985 until 2005, by R.C. and others, including a lessee of R.C. which operated a model airplane club on the land, and the Army Corps of Engineers, which used the roadway to access a dam release warning horn on the river. R.C. presented surveys referenced in the various deeds which identified this roadway as its easement. Some evidence was also presented to show that after the equestrian complex was developed in 1998 by Silver Creek, a predecessor in title to the M.P. defendants, a barn blocked a portion of this existing roadway, and a gravel drive was installed around it.

The location of the easement became an issue after Mommies Properties purchased the stable property in 2005 and blocked access to R.C.'s property, informing R.C. by e-mail that it could no longer use the roadway. R.C. presented evidence that after matters reached this impasse, it began negotiations with both the M.P. defendants and the Cambridge defendants to move the easement to a location agreeable to all the parties. Testimony was presented that a location was agreed upon, and that R.C. constructed a roadway at its expense, referred to by the parties as the “New Road.” This roadway, however, was also blocked by defendants, and this action followed.

(Footnote omitted.) R.C. Acres I , 331 Ga.App. at 764–765 (1), 771 S.E.2d 444.

R.C. filed a complaint seeking to quiet title to its easement and for damages for interference with its use and enjoyment of the easement, and the case ultimately proceeded to trial against multiple defendants, including the Cambridge defendants and the M.P. defendants. The jury trial that ensued was bifurcated. The first phase of the trial addressed the original and final locations of the easement over the defendants' properties, and the second phase addressed whether and to what extent the defendants interfered with R.C.'s easement rights.

As part of the preparation of the special verdict form for the first phase of the trial, the trial court decided that the jury would be provided a redacted plat of the defendants' properties and would be asked to draw the original and final locations of the easement on the plat using colored markers. When the trial court provided the parties with its proposed redacted plat, R.C. objected to the plat and to the procedure proposed by the trial court for identifying the original and final locations of the easement. R.C. took issue with the fact that the redacted plat prepared by the trial court showed the outline of “Old Woods Road” and the southern boundary line of the defendants' properties, but not the outline of the “New Road,” which was another possible location of the easement that could be found by the jury. R.C. argued that

[s]hould the jury select some place other than what might clearly be Old Woods Road or might clearly be the southern boundary of the property when they locate the easement on the property, we are all going to be left to guess. They obviously won't be able to make a survey with a colored marker, and we will be left to guess where on the ground that the jury indicated to locate the easement.

R.C. proposed that the jury instead be given a clear choice between a limited number of alternative locations for the easement based on the evidence and argument presented by the parties at trial.

The M.P. defendants responded that the redacted plat and the procedure proposed by the trial court would result in the identification of the original and final locations of the easement with sufficient certainty because “[t]he Court has authority to interpret the verdict in connection with future proceedings.” The M.P. defendants noted that “if, for example, the jury were to ... come up with a path that follows even roughly where the location of [the] new road is,” the court could refer to other surveys in the record to identify the easement intended by the jury.

The trial court overruled R.C.'s objections to the redacted plat and to the procedure for having the jury identify the original and final locations of the easement. The trial court concluded that “wherever ... [the jurors] mark the location of the easement, the Court will be able to interpret that location” to scale.

In its subsequent charge to the jury in the first phase of the trial, the trial court discussed the special verdict form with the jurors. The trial court instructed the jurors to answer the questions on the form about the location of the original deeded easement, whether the easement had been relocated, and, if so, when the relocation had occurred. In discussing the redacted plat attached as an exhibit to the special verdict form, the trial court instructed the jurors to draw the original deeded easement and the relocated easement on the plat, which had a graphics scale attached to it showing how many feet equaled one inch, and the court provided the jury a survey scale, a calculator, colored markers, and extra copies of the redacted plat. The trial court clarified that “[i]n deciding the issue of whether the deeded easement was relocated, and if so, to what location, [the jurors were] not to consider the issue of the width of any such relocated easement,” which was an issue for the court to determine. The trial court also later clarified, in response to a question from jurors, that the reference to the “relocated” easement in the special verdict form meant the final location of the easement.

Following its deliberations, the jury returned a special verdict form finding that the original location of the easement was “parallel to the southern boundary” of the property, that the easement had been relocated, and that the relocation had occurred in “Fall 2008.” On the redacted plat attached to the special verdict form, the jury drew two lines with the colored markers, labeling one “Deeded Easement” and the other “New–Relocated Road.”

The jury's special verdict form and redacted plat were incorporated into the trial court's judgment after the second phase of the bifurcated trial.² The judgment did not reduce to scale or include a metes and bounds description of the original and final locations of the easement. Although the trial court had previously determined as a matter of law that the width of the easement was 60 feet, that determination also was not incorporated into the judgment.

R.C. appealed from the judgment entered by the trial court, contending, among other things, that the judgment did not adequately identify or describe the final location of the easement, thereby preventing R.C. from obtaining marketable title.³ See R.C. Acres I , 331 Ga.App. at 769 (3), 771 S.E.2d 444

. In R.C. Acres I, we agreed with R.C. that the description of the...