Virginia family owned 560-acre land but a pipeline company wanted part of it. They refused to sell; what happened next ended in a $523,327 court battle

When major infrastructure projects pass through private property, landowners can find themselves in a difficult position. They may still own the larger property, but a company can receive the legal right to use part of it, even when the owners do not agree to the deal. For families who have held the same land for generations, the dispute can become about more than just acreage. It can also come down to how much that loss of control is worth. That is what happened to a Virginia family whose property had remained in their hands for seven generations.

The 560-acre tract in Bent Mountain, Roanoke County, had forests, meadows and headwaters, and the Terry family had continued to hold on to it through the years. Then the Mountain Valley Pipeline project reached the property.

The company wanted a corridor through the land but the family did not want to sell.

The family refused the pipeline company’s offer

In 2018, Mountain Valley Pipeline offered the Terry family about $119,000 for an easement covering roughly eight acres of their property, according to NBC Washington, which cited The Roanoke Times.

An easement would not mean the family was selling the entire 560-acre property. Instead, it would give the pipeline company certain rights to use a section of the land for construction and maintenance of the pipeline. The family rejected the offer.

Mountain Valley then used eminent domain, a legal power available to approved interstate pipeline projects under federal law, to obtain the rights it needed. Construction followed, including tree cutting along the pipeline route.

At that point, the central legal question was no longer whether the pipeline would cross the property. That decision had effectively already been made. The fight was over compensation.

The two sides saw the property very differently

Once the dispute reached federal court in Roanoke, much of the argument centered on the value of the property and the effect of the pipeline on it.

The Terry family’s appraiser valued the entire 560-acre property at about $1.9 million. That assessment included the land’s potential for use as a commercial wind farm. Based on that valuation, the family sought about $570,000 in compensation.

Mountain Valley’s appraiser, Joseph Thompson, reached a substantially different figure. He valued the property at around $1.2 million before the taking and argued that the reduction in value caused by the pipeline was much smaller.

During the four-day trial, the company’s attorneys argued that the family should receive roughly $153,000.

Jurors therefore had to work through conflicting valuations and different approaches to measuring the effect of the pipeline on the property.

Jury reaches a figure neither side had proposed

The jury ultimately awarded the Terry family an amount far above what Mountain Valley had argued it should pay, though still below the $570,000 requested by the family.

The verdict was $523,327. Frank Terry, who lives on the property in a farmhouse with his brother and sister, welcomed the decision but made clear that receiving money was not the same as getting back what the family had lost.

Terry told The Roanoke Times that the award was “a great thing for the jury to do.” But he also said, “I don’t want them on my property, and if I could I’d keep them off,” referring to the construction workers.

The jury's decision, however, was not the end of the case.

Judge cuts the jury award nearly in half

After the verdict, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon reviewed the award and concluded that the jury had gone beyond what the evidence supported.

In 2023, Dillon set aside the $523,327 verdict and entered a reduced judgment of $261,033.

That meant the amount the family would actually receive was once again being contested. The Terrys appealed the decision, taking the compensation dispute to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

The question was whether the jury had been allowed to reach its original figure based on the evidence presented at trial.

Appeals court restores the original verdict

In May 2024, the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court's decision and reinstated the full $523,327 jury award.

The appeals court determined that the amount was within the range supported by the testimony the jury had heard. It also found that the property’s residential value alone could support the award.

So, after years of disagreement, the amount settled at the figure the jury had originally reached.

The dispute was part of a much larger legal battle surrounding the Mountain Valley Pipeline. NBC Washington reported that Mountain Valley had sued owners of roughly 300 parcels who refused to sell land for the project. Most cases were eventually settled, while fewer than a dozen remained pending at the time of the report. The company said about 85% of landowners along the pipeline route agreed to sell and were not sued.

For the Terry family, the outcome meant they continued to own the 560-acre property, but the pipeline corridor would remain there. What began with an offer of about $119,000 eventually became a years-long fight over the value of the property rights being taken.

The final figure was not the one Mountain Valley first offered, nor the amount the district judge later ordered. It was the $523,327 awarded by the jury and ultimately restored by the appeals court.