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Fight over power-line easement wasn’t easy for Madison County family

By Dean Narciso, The Columbus Dispatch Monday August 25, 2014

Claribel Yoder, 80, stopped FirstEnergy from running power lines through a quarry on her land. It must go around the quarry and pay her $400,000 for access.

When FirstEnergy told Claribel Yoder that she had a 50-year-old utility easement on her property, she was baffled.

She has owned the 100 acres in northern Madison County for 45 of her 80 years and never saw any power lines or other utilities in the area the company considered its easement.

When she learned two years ago that the easement ran through the middle of a sand and gravel quarry that she had leased to an excavation company, she became worried. The quarry proceeds were much of her retirement income and helped maintain the land.

But the bad news didn’t stop there. Yoder was told that she would need to vacate the property and that she was being charged $600,000 for damage to the site. That’s when she became angry.

“We were stunned,” said Yoder, who has lived on the Cemetery Pike property alongside Big Darby Creek since 1971.

The family bought the land in 1969. Yoder designed the floor plans for the homestead that eventually would accommodate three sons. The family farmed corn and soybeans until her husband, Lloyd, died a few years ago. Today, the quiet is interrupted only by the rustle of aspen leaves, calls of martins and swallows and the distant whir of trucks 50 feet deep in the quarry.

Seven years before the couple found their slice of the American dream, a cousin of Mr. Yoder’s had agreed to let then-Ohio Edison have access to the property to install electricity lines in the future.

In the 50 years since, folks moved on and around the protected land. But little development occurred, except for the Yoder quarry. It provided material for Rt. 33 south from Marysville. Today, Tuffco operates it for similar road projects.

Then, in 2012, FirstEnergy showed up with a plan to extend transmission lines 58.5 miles, from Springfield in Clark County into Delaware County. The preferred route would slice directly through the Yoder quarry.

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Fight over power-line easement wasn’t easy for Madison County family (continued)

“I couldn’t even understand it,” Mrs. Yoder said of the company’s plans. “They didn’t say why they needed it.

They just said they’re gonna get it — that’s the way it was.”

Others around Plain City had similar contact with the company. Eventually, a town meeting was called. That’s when Michael Braunstein, a Columbus lawyer, learned about the standoff and quickly recognized what he called an injustice.

Ohio law protects property owners from utility easements if they can show that the easement holder had abandoned it for more than 21 years. Key legal elements of what’s known as “the doctrine of adverse possession” include proof that the property owner claiming to own the easement used or maintained it in an open and obvious way.

The Yoder quarry is a classic example, Braunstein said.

And FirstEnergy should have known about the quarry if it had kept track of its easement, much like a company protecting its patent. Instead, the company told Mrs. Yoder to abandon the operation and, by extension, her livelihood.

“I just think it’s terribly unfair,” Braunstein said.

“The whole thing could have been avoided if they had treated her evenhanded in the beginning. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen companies taking advantage of people — particularly the elderly — and trying to scare the hell out of them.”

First Energy sued Mrs. Yoder, raising the damages the company sought to $1 million and then to $1.8 million, according to court records.

“When we stood up to them, they kept asking for more,” she said.

If the company had taken a different approach, they would have agreed to it, said Mrs. Yoder’s son David, 51, who lives on the property, too. “We were never against them going into the property. We just wanted them to be reasonable about it.”

FirstEnergy officials say they did not know about the quarry before 2012. A spokesman for the Akron-based company said the Yoders should have done a title search and sought permission before operating the quarry.

“We believe we’ve been upfront and negotiated fairly along the way,” said Mark Durbin, FirstEnergy spokesman. “We thought we had an easement that was valid.”

FirstEnergy settled the lawsuit this year “in order to build this important electric-transmission project,” Durbin said. The company agreed to pay Mrs. Yoder $400,000 for access around the quarry — what the Yoders wanted all along.

What would have cost the Yoder’s $600,000 became a $400,000 windfall.

“I hope I never have to do it again,” Mrs. Yoder said of the dispute. “It works on you. You try not to let it get to you.”

She said she has learned the importance of fighting perceived injustice.

“It was in God’s hands,” she said. “And it was worth it.”

614-229-4512 or 888-231-2554

500 S. Front Street, Suite 1200, Columbus, OH 43215 www.GBlegal.net • www.ohiopipelineresults.com