Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 23, 1993 TAG: 9306230048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The end came on June 11, when the Virginia Supreme Court refused to reconsider its April decision not to hear an appeal by the heirs of Wise County farmer Galen Roberts.
The heirs had lost a lawsuit in Wise County Circuit Court in March 1992 against Penn Virginia Corp., a Philadelphia-based company and one of the largest owners of mineral rights in the Virginia coal fields.
The case was filed in Wise County Circuit Court in 1956 but didn't go to trial until February 1992. If an earlier version is taken into account, the case goes back to 1947.
At stake were millions of dollars in royalties on coal mined from 1,000 acres of some of the richest coal land in Appalachia.
In the decades since the current suit was filed, the original plaintiffs died and their survivors and relatives carried on. Over the years, seven circuit judges presided over the case and roughly two dozen lawyers played a part.
Clintwood lawyer Gerald Gray was 7 years old when the case was filed. Gray, who represented some of the Roberts' heirs, described the decision of the state high court as the "death blow" for the lawsuit.
Gray said he believes, as do the heirs he represented, that Galen Roberts was taken advantage of 119 years ago when sophisticated coal buyers negotiated with him for the mineral rights to his mountain land.
"I'm convinced," Gray said, "he thought he was doing something to take care of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
But Henry Keuling-Stout of Big Stone Gap doesn't think Roberts was duped. Keuling-Stout is the third in a line of chief defense lawyers for Penn Virginia and other companies named as defendants in the suit.
"He wasn't a fool," Keuling-Stout said. "He made good money selling off the properties that he had originally leased."
What Roberts did on Sept. 19, 1874, was put his "X" mark on a 99-year lease assigning the mineral rights to his property to Andrew Jackson Steinman Jr. of Lancaster, Pa., and J.D. Price of Rockingham County. In return Roberts got $1 and a promise of 10 cents on every ton mined from the 13 seams of coal beneath the land.
Coal was not mined on the property until 1943, more than half a century after Roberts was killed in a feud with another mountain family. Since mining began, the land has produced roughly 30,000 tons of a coal a month.
Galen Roberts had 11 children, 91 grandchildren and scores of great- and great-great-grandchildren. At least 479 of his heirs had signed on to the lawsuit.
Lawyers for the heirs had estimated that royalties due their clients amounted to roughly $8 million at the time of the lease's expiration in 1973, and would have added up to much more since then because the going rate for coal royalties now is between $1 and $2 per ton.
But the key legal question was: Who owned the mineral rights to the land once Roberts sold it?
The heirs argued that the signing of the 99-year lease split the mineral rights from the surface rights. That was important because Roberts and his family subsequently sold the property to different coal companies, with it eventually falling entirely into the hands of Penn Virginia.
Keuling-Stout, representing Penn Virginia, argued that when the surface rights were sold, the mineral lease was part of the sale.
A circuit judge in Wise County ruled against the heirs last year, but they appealed. After hearing oral arguments this past winter, the state Supreme Court decided in April that it would not hear the case, prompting the heirs' last-ditch attempt to get the court to reconsider the decision.
Paul Roberts of Coeburn, a great-grandson of Galen Roberts, wished that the court had forced the coal companies to show how they came to own the mineral rights to the land.
He estimated that he and other heirs spent between $50,000 and $100,000 on the case for expenses such as surveying the property.
As to the court's final decision this month, he said, "I guess probably the end of the train's done gone by."
by CNB