Ward v. Harding

LAMBERT, Justice.

With ratification of Section 19(2) of the Constitution of Kentucky,1 the people swept away decades of litigation and numerous court decisions addressing the proper construction of so-called “broad form” deeds. By the amendment, the people have declared that henceforth in instruments of conveyance of the type at issue here, it shall be held, in the absence of clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, that coal extraction be only by the known methods in the area at the time the instruments were executed. That the Constitution may be so amended is an indisputable…