Sanders v Lincoln County
| Decision Date | 03 September 1999 |
| Docket Number | 99-00111 |
| Parties | KEVIN SANDERS and PATRICIA SANDERS, Plaintiffs/Appellants. VS. LINCOLN COUNTY and STEVE GRAHAM, Chairman of Lincoln County Commission, Defendants/Appellees. C.A.IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE Filed |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Tennessee |
From the Chancery Court of Lincoln County at Fayetteville.
Lincoln County Chancery Court No. 10,982
Honorable Lee Russell, Judge, Sitting by Interchange
Plaintiffs Kevin and Patricia Sanders appeal the trial court's judgment which dismissed their complaint against Defendants/Appellees Lincoln County and Steve Graham, Chairman of the Lincoln County Commission, based upon the court's rulings that the complaint failed to state an equal protection claim against the Defendants and, alternatively, that the Sanders' equal protection claim was barred by principles of res judicata.1 We conclude that both of these rulings were in error and, thus, we reverse the trial court's judgment and remand this cause for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Kevin Sanders, Pro Se
Gregory H. Oakley, MANIER & HEROD, Nashville, Tennessee, Attorney for Defendants/Appellees.
OPINION FILED:
REVERSED AND REMANDED
The Sanders own a 316-acre farm in Lincoln County upon which they raise cattle. The Sanders' farm is bisected by Martin Hollow Road, a public road that has been maintained by Lincoln County since at least 1975. In addition to the Sanders, several other area residents must use Martin Hollow Road to access their homes.
Until 1996, the Sanders maintained stock gaps (or cattle guards) on Martin Hollow Road at the two points where the road crosses their property lines. Along with fencing around the property's perimeter, the stock gaps prevented the Sanders' cattle from leaving the property. Although the perimeter fencing and stock gaps effectively contained the Sanders' cattle on their property, within the confines of the property the cattle crossed Martin Hollow Road at will. Consequently, some of the area residents who used Martin Hollow Road complained that the Sanders' cattle had caused several accidents and near-accidents on the road.
In response to these and other complaints, the Lincoln County Highway Committee recommended that the County remove stock gaps from all County roads. The Lincoln County Commission did not formally adopt the Highway Committee's recommendation at the time it was made in July 1996, but the Commission agreed that it needed to address the problem and it subsequently implemented a general policy of removing stock gaps from all County roads.
At the Commission's direction, County Executive Jerry Mansfield sent letters to Kevin Sanders and three other landowners asking them to fence their land to prevent cattle from roaming on County roads. The other landowners agreed to comply with the Commission's request, either by fencing their land or by otherwise taking steps to keep their cattle off the roads; however, Kevin Sanders refused to fence his property along Martin Hollow Road or to remove his stock gaps from the road because of the considerable expense involved.
In March 1997, the Commission passed a resolution requiring the removal of stock gaps from Martin Hollow Road. The resolution applied only to Martin Hollow Road; it did not refer to any other County roads affected by the County's stock gap removal policy.
The following month, the Sanders filed a complaint in the Chancery Court of Lincoln County seeking an injunction against enforcement of the Commission's resolution. The Sanders' complaint named as defendants County Executive Jerry Mansfield and County Road Superintendent Donny Ray Hudson. Among other claims, the Sanders contended that the Commission's resolution denied them equal protection of the law2 because the resolution unfairly singled them out and did not apply to similarly-situated landowners in the County.
After conducting a trial at which extensive testimony was presented, the chancellor entered a memorandum opinion and judgment rejecting the Sanders' equal protection claim. As pertinent, the chancellor's memorandum opinion indicated that the facts in the case are virtually undisputed. The [Sanders] own in fee simple land on either side of Martin Hollow Road in a rural part of Lincoln County, Tennessee. The road is a gravel road that has been maintained by Lincoln County for decades and has been shown as a public road on the work map of the county during the entire term of the current road superintendent. . . .
Multiple families live on Martin Hollow [R]oad beyond the [Sanders'] section of the road and beyond the stock gaps across the [Sanders'] section of the road. . . . The evidence is overwhelming that recently and for years the [Sanders'] cattle have roamed at large across this section of road. The stock gaps impede the cattle's movement up the road, allowing the [Sanders] to have their cattle on the road but preventing the cattle from escaping onto land beyond the [Sanders'] property.
In recent years, members of the [County Commission] and other elected officials in Lincoln County have received numerous complaints about the presence of the cattle on the road and about the damage done to the road by the cattle. One school bus driver, who drives children on this road, has complained about the situation. Three or four years ago the [Sanders] bulldozed out an old stock fence along a portion of the road, and now there are no fences in existence which impede the [Sanders'] cattle from occupying the road. There have been some minor accidents as a result, but no major injuries, but the free passage of vehicles has often been impeded by the presence of the cattle and by the damage the cattle have done to the road.
In July of 1996, the [County Commission] established a general policy against having stock gaps across county roads. Letters from county officials and direct contact of the landowners by county officials communicated to several citizens the need to remove their stock gaps. Virtually all of the landowners except the [Sanders] have removed or agreed to remove their stock gaps. The [Sanders], however, refused to do so. As a result, the [Commission] passed a resolution on March 17, 1997, directing that the stock gaps on Martin Hollow Road be removed on May 20, 1997. The [Sanders] filed for an injunction against this action by the county on April 4, 1997.
. . . .
The evidence of the Defendants' witnesses, neighbors and county officials, and the photographs submitted into evidence established that the [Sanders'] cattle are frequently and in large numbers on the road and that they regularly obstruct passage on the road and do physical damage to the road. The county has a sufficient interest in the road to allow it to manage the presence of obstructions on the road. Removal of the stock gaps is an appropriate action to take to limit the presence of cattle on the road, although it is not a complete solution to the problem of the cattle on the road. . . .
If the resolution of March 17, 1997, were viewed in isolation, it might appear to single out and discriminate against the [Sanders]. The evidence in the case, however, makes it clear that the actual situation was that the [Sanders] were the lone offenders against a more general policy of the county. Other stock gaps which still exist elsewhere in the county are either in the process of being removed, are at points beyond which no one lives or no one other than the party who maintains the gaps, or in areas where there is no problem with cattle having access to the road. The [Sanders'] situation is unique in that removing the stock gaps on Martin Hollow Road will discourage the running of cattle on a publicly maintained road which is used by the general public. The policy is not discriminatory and is imminently (sic) reasonable.
On appeal, this court agreed with the chancellor's ruling that, although the Commission's resolution appeared to affect only the Sanders, the resolution did not deny them equal protection of the law because the Commission had applied the same policy to the Sanders as it had to other residents of the County. Accordingly, this court affirmed the chancellor's judgment rejecting the Sanders' equal protection challenge to the resolution. Sanders v. Mansfield, No. 01A01_9705_CH_00222, 1998 WL 57532, at *5 (Tenn. App. Feb. 13, 1998).
After this court released its opinion in Sanders v. Mansfield, the Sanders instituted the present action by filing a complaint in the Chancery Court of Lincoln County against Lincoln County and against Steve Graham, Chairman of the Lincoln County Commission. In its new complaint, the Sanders asserted that they had been denied equal protection of the law as the result of actions taken by the Defendants while the appeal in Sanders v. Mansfield was pending. Specifically, the Sanders alleged that, instead of enforcing the stock gap removal policy against two similarly-situated landowners, the Defendants removed the two affected roads, Gill Road and Endsley Road, from the County road list, thus exempting the other two landowners from its policy. The Sanders further alleged that stock gaps still were in place on Gill Road and Endsley Road, that cattle still were running at large on these roads, and that the danger to the public posed by the utilization of stock gaps on these roads was at least as great as the danger posed by the stock gaps on Martin Hollow Road, but that the Defendants had not removed Martin Hollow Road from the County road list. The Sanders sought a ruling that the Defendants' actions had violated their equal protection rights, an injunction requiring the Defendants to remove Martin Hollow Road from the Lincoln County road list, and an order permitting the Sanders to replace the two stock gaps on Martin Hollow Road. The Sanders also sought damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983.
The Defendants responded to the Sanders' complaint by...
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