Davis Sand and Gravel Corp. v. Buckler

Evans, J., by special assignment, delivered the opinion of the Court. Damages were assessed by the trial court against the appellant, and it appeals. Its contention is not that the amount of the award was improper, but that the court had no authority to make such an award. ³⁷² This is the third trip to this Court for these parties and a brief chronology of events is necessary to answer appellant’s contentions. The first case, Buckler v. Davis Sand and Gravel Corporation, 208 Md. 162 (1955), dealt with a bill in equity for foreclosure of a mortgage and for an injunction against the use of a right-of-way.

In January 1951 Charles Buckler and his wife sold a twenty-five acre tract, called the Buckler Tract, to Davis Sand and Gravel Corporation, hereinafter called Davis, for use as part of an operation for mining sand and gravel. Incorporated in that deed was a grant of a forty-five foot easement over the remainder of the Buckler property to the land mined by Davis, in effect giving Davis access for its trucks to a public road. The deed provided for the automatic termination or reversion of the right-of-way if Davis did not, for a period of longer than one year, mine the Buckler Tract “and its or their holdings of adjacent property as a sand and gravel pit”. At the time of this purchase, Davis’ other holdings in the same general area were the Crawford pit, the Schultz pit, and a lot called the Wall’s property.

Six months later, in July 1951, it further enlarged its holdings with the acquisition of another property called the Goddard Tract, which adjoined the Buckler Tract. Mrs. Buckler (her husband had died) sought in this first action to close the right-of-way, but an injunction was denied by the trial judge. This Court affirmed that part of the decree, holding that the condition for the continuing existence of the easement had not been breached. It was not decided at that time, however, whether the mining operations in progress on the after acquired Goddard Tract, to which use the forty-five foot right-of-way was also being put, came within the contemplation of the parties when they made the deed and established the easement.

In 1959 these parties made their second trip to this Court in Buckler v. Davis Sand and Gravel Corporation, 221 Md. 532 . Plaintiff (Mrs. Buckler) again sought to enjoin the defendant from continuing to use the easement at all; or, if that be denied, to enjoin the defendant from subjecting the easement to ³⁷³ the increased burden it was then required to undergo. The injunction was denied by the trial judge, but that decision was reversed by this Court. We found at that time that the right to the use of the easement had been lost by Davis on or about September 7, 1958, when the tract had not been mined for more than a year.

What was revealed at that trial was that Davis was no longer mining the Buckler Tract; that it had, in fact, disposed of its other “adjacent holdings” and that it had transferred all or substantially all the mining operations to the Goddard Tract. We ruled that the right to the easement had terminated, and also that its use for access to the Goddard Tract constituted a trespass and one which had existed since July 1951. We said, “We think it is clear that the defendant was never entitled to use the easement as the means of ingress to and regress from the after acquired Goddard Tract, and the only rights created by the easement having terminated, the