Monthly Archives: October 2014

We have been talking about the different kinds of property rights, particularly mineral rights and the rights to the land above mineral deposits. Pennsylvania is dealing more and more with issues like this now that advances in technology have made the Marcellus Shale easier to tap into. Mineral rights were easy to ignore or to forget about when they were not worth anything. Now, there is a lot of money at stake.

In the last couple of posts, we have discussed how the law treats property ownership. Property rights are commonly described as a “bundle of sticks,” and a landowner can lend or sell or duel over one stick or a combination of sticks. When a landowner grants his neighbor an easement with a reversionary right, for example, he essentially loans a couple of sticks from his bundle to his neighbor for as long as his neighbor needs them; when his neighbor no longer needs them, the sticks go back to the landowner.

When law students and real estate agents learn about property rights, they hear the expression “bundle of sticks” over and over. A landowner does not have one property right; he has a bunch of them. Some of them can be transferred, but that transfer does not affect the other rights. We have been talking about easements, a kind of transfer that leaves all the other sticks in the bundle. Bob’s right-of-way through Judy’s farm does not reduce her interest in the rest of her land.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed down a decision recently that addresses important and interesting property law issues. We have taken the long way around to get to this discussion — a friend would say the posts about Brandt v. U.S. were the Proust Route — but it does have to do with fundamental property rights. And, just to sweeten the pot, the case is about land resting on the Marcellus Shale.

We are back to discussing easements and one particular U.S. Supreme Court case (Brandt v. U.S.) that challenged the government’s right to giveth and then taketh away the right to a parcel of land. The plaintiffs were landowners who believed they were due compensation (under eminent domain) for abandoned railway corridors that the federal government turned into recreational trails.

When it comes to the construction industry, there are a lot of state and federal laws that must be followed in order to avoid potential litigation. But did you know that even if you think you have followed the law to the “T,” you may still face litigation, even for someone else’s irresponsible behavior?

It is hard, some days, not to think of Dr. Seuss when we are flipping through real estate cases. The expression from “Horton Hatches the Egg” is usually the first to come to mind: “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.” Property and contract law would be a lot easier, though much less interesting, if everyone would just say what they mean and mean what they say.