Ind. Plaintiff Seeks to Nullify Easement, Chase 5 Telecom Firms From Her Property

American Tower and its Ulysses subsidiary, plus Verizon and Alltel, removed to U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana in South Bend Thursday an Aug. 16 complaint filed in Elkhart Superior Court in which plaintiff Debra Brown seeks to nullify the wireless communications easement on her residential property in Goshen, Indiana, and to exclude the defendants from the parcel of real estate that’s “burdened” by the easement, said their notice of removal (docket 3:23-cv-00842).

Brown’s complaint also lists Comcast Broadband Security, Frontier and T-Mobile as co-defendants. Though those companies didn’t partake in Thursday’s removal, they did consent to it, said the notice.

The easement, which American Tower and Ulysses are parties to “through succession of interest,” grants them the “exclusive perpetual” use of the property “for the transmission and reception of any and all wireless voice and data telephone and other wireless communication signals,” said the notice of removal. The easement further provides that American Tower and Ulysses “intend to encourage the addition” of telecom customers to the property, it said. These rights enable American Tower and Ulysses “to collect revenue in perpetuity from wireless phone companies and other companies that use the facility to transmit wireless signals to customers,” it said.

Brown’s father, Harlan Lantz, was the original lessor of the easement, and the initial term of the lease extended from Nov. 1, 1994, to Oct. 31, 2014, said Brown’s complaint. But an option was afforded the lessee to renew the lease for two additional terms of five years each, the first renewal expiring in October 2019, and the second in October 2024, it said. The option required the lessee to provide written notice to the lessor of its intent to renew at least 90 days before the expiration of the current term, it said.

To the best of Brown's knowledge, no notice of lease renewal for the term ending in October 2019 was ever given to the successors of Harlan Lantz, who died in March 2015, more than four years before that term was due to expire, said Brown’s complaint. Lantz’s successors include Brown and her husband and Brown’s mother, Charlotte Lantz, it said. Brown asks the court to declare that the lease “has now expired and is of no further force or effect,” it said. She also asks the court to declare that her title to the property on which the easement stands “is quieted against any claim” of any of the defendants, it said.

Brown is entitled to possession of the real estate, “free and clear of any actual possession or use” by any of the defendants, except for a 25-foot-wide parcel of land that Frontier may have acquired under deeds of easement granted by Charlotte Lantz, said Brown’s complaint. Except to the extent that Frontier has “rights of use” under those deeds, the defendants have, by the installation of their facilities, “unlawfully kept Brown from unencumbered possession of her real estate,” it said. The facilities include above-ground and underground fiber-optic cables, plus one or more phone lines, it said.

Brown is entitled to “fair and reasonable compensation” for the defendants' “unlawful use of her land” during the past six years, said her complaint. She seeks a judgment granting her sole possession of the real estate, requiring the defendants to remove any facilities from the property, and “to restore any land disturbed by such removal to its natural condition.” it said. In addition to monetary damages, she also seeks the recovery of court costs from the defendants, plus any further relief “as may be consistent with the facts and matters pleaded herein or shown at the trial of this cause,” it said.