Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Poindexter

George Rose Smith, Justice.

In 1959 the appellant, Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, in the mistaken belief that it had a valid easement across the vacant 17-acre rural tract involved in this ease, buried a long-distance telephone cable along the east edge of the property. The cable was forty inches deep and about twelve feet inside the boundary line, which abutted a railroad right-of-way.

Six years later the appellee purchased the tract and, upon learning about the cable, demanded that Southwestern Bell remove it. The telephone company brought this suit to enjoin Poindexter from damaging…