Ark Land Co. v. Harper

Facts

The dispute concerned about 75 acres in Lincoln County, West Virginia. The land held a farmhouse built around 1920, several small barns and a garden. The Caudill family had owned it for nearly 100 years. Before 2001, only family members owned it. In 2001, Ark Land Company bought a 67.5% undivided interest (a share of the whole, not a particular part) from several family members. Ark Land tried to buy the rest from the Caudill heirs, but they refused to sell. Ark Land wanted all of the land so that it could extract coal by surface mining. It then sued to have the land partitioned (divided among the co-owners) and sold. The heirs' mining engineer testified that the land around the family home had no coal deposits and could be split off. Ark Land's experts testified that such a division would add several million dollars in costs to mine the coal. The heirs did not object for money reasons. Their only interest was the long family ownership and their emotional wish to keep the ancestral home in the family. No one lived at the home permanently, but the heirs used it on weekends and for special family events.

Issues

1. In a partition proceeding where a co-owner opposes a sale, is the property's economic value the exclusive test for deciding whether to partition in kind or by sale?
2. Did the evidence support the circuit court's conclusion that the land could not be conveniently partitioned in kind, so that a sale was warranted over the heirs' emotional interest in their ancestral home?

Holding

When a co-owner opposes a sale, the property's economic value is not the exclusive test. The circuit court erred in determining that the property could not be partitioned in kind: a sale would prejudice the heirs' emotional interest in their ancestral home, and Ark Land's added cost did not justify it. The property must be partitioned in kind.