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Rolling up the sidewalk to your home

By Bluegrass Institute

We are participating in an amicus brief being filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals on behalf of the Stearns Corporation in Lexington. If Stearns loses this appeal, every property owner’s unalienable right to use his or her property – without first asking government’s permission – is at risk.

This case holds great importance for property owners across the country. Read the media coverage of the case here.

Here is why this case is so important to Kentucky property owners:

An appeals court has overturned a ruling requiring the federal government to compensate The Stearns Co. for unmined coal beneath 35,611 acres in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

In 1937, The Stearns Co., headed by CEO Bob Gable’s ancestors, sold the surface rights to the federal government. However, the company retained the mineral rights under that surface, and mined coal nearly every year thereafter.

But the federal government canceled the company’s easement in 1977, requiring Gable to ask permission to mine his own coal. In 1980, Gable leased some coal to another company to open four small coal mines, which would have disturbed a total of fewer than 26 surface acres. All of the necessary environmental permits were applied for and received. The feds shut down the operations because Gable, his easement no longer recognized, refused to ask for “permission.”

Gable’s goal was to sell the minerals not mine them. Extinguishing mining rights shut off access to the minerals and effectively rendered those reserves worthless.

“In mining, when your rights have been extinguished, no one wants to buy your coal reserves, because they will not be buying the easement through the surface – the right to mine,” Gables wrote. “The fair market value of your mineral reserves becomes zero.”

The fed’s action in this case, and the appeals court’s reversal, have chilling ramifications for all property owners. It allows government to first cancel owners’ legal rights to use their property and then condemn it without paying for it because the property no longer has “fair market value.”

During the 24-year-long fight that Gable has waged against the wrongful taking of his property, he has suffered much persecution from naysayers who resent his relentless pursuit of principle in this case.

The envy of Gable’s critics must not be allowed to prevail at the expense of the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution, which declares private property cannot “be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

It’s appalling that the federal government is denying Gable the legal right to use his property. It’s even worse that they refuse to compensate him for the injustice.

Sources:

“Ruling on unmined coal reversed” by Lee Mueller, Lexington Herald-Leader

"Gable's legal loss is a win for the public" Courier-Journal editorial

“Gable’s case ‘is about property rights, not the environment’” by Bob Gable, Courier-Journal

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