A pipeline company has crossed the same Cass County farm since 1962. The farmhouse it agreed to supply with natural gas burned down almost twenty years ago. On September 22, the Missouri Court of Appeals held that the company still owes gas service to the house built in its place.
Timing note: the opinion in Tharp v. Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline, Inc., No. WD88122, was filed September 22, 2026. Missouri appellate opinions remain subject to rehearing and to transfer to the Supreme Court of Missouri, so this describes the opinion as filed rather than a final mandate.
Recorded easements outlive the people who sign them, the buildings they describe, and often the companies that hold them. That is the point of recording an instrument in the first place. Under Section 442.390 RSMo, a properly certified and recorded instrument imparts notice of its contents to every later purchaser and mortgagee, who are deemed in law and equity to buy with that notice. The practical consequence is that a buyer inherits both the burden of an easement and, where the instrument creates one, its benefit.
The Western District applied that principle to a sixty-four-year-old gas pipeline easement, affirming a judgment that requires the operator to make a new tap for a replacement dwelling. It reversed the money damages the trial court had added, for reasons that have nothing to do with easements and a great deal to do with how summary judgment records are built.
The 1962 promise that came with the pipeline
In 1962 the then-owners of the Cass County property granted Cities Service Gas Company a right-of-way to construct, operate, maintain and replace a gas pipeline across their land. Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline, Inc. is the successor to that grantee. The grant was not a gift. The instrument recited consideration, and part of that consideration was a continuing service obligation.
The operative language, as quoted in the opinion
“As part of the consideration hereof, [Cities Gas] agrees, upon Grantor’s written request therefor, to make a tap upon its gas pipe line constructed hereunder at a point nearest the principal dwelling house now on said land, and sell, or cause to be sold, to [Prior Owners] at said connection natural gas for domestic purposes in the principal dwelling house now on said land . . . and continue to so sell, or cause to be sold, such gas as long as [Cities Gas] transports gas through said pipe line . . . .”
Cities Gas made the tap, and the prior owners bought gas for domestic use for many years, first from Cities Gas and later from Southern Star. The arrangement functioned as written for roughly forty-five years.
A fire, a new house, and a refusal
Sometime between 2007 and 2008, fire destroyed the original farmhouse. Paul and Erin Tharp later bought the property and built a new house on it. In 2023 they sent Southern Star a written request to make a tap for their home. Southern Star refused. Its position rested on four words appearing twice in the instrument: the house “now on said land.” On that reading, the company had promised a tap and gas only for the 1962 structure, that structure no longer existed, and the consideration for the easement had been fully delivered.
The Tharps sued in Cass County Circuit Court in July 2024, pleading breach of contract, trespass in the alternative, and a declaratory judgment construing the easement. The parties filed a joint stipulation of facts and cross-motions for summary judgment, each seeking a final judgment on all claims. They told the trial court on the record that the only question left was the legal effect of the easement. The court ruled for the Tharps, and Southern Star appealed. If you are on either side of a dispute like this, the mechanics matter as much as the merits, which is why we treat these as real estate litigation rather than paperwork.
Why the court read the easement as a whole
Judge Cynthia L. Martin wrote for a unanimous panel that also included Chief Judge Edward R. Ardini, Jr., presiding, and Judge Alok Ahuja. Review of summary judgment on stipulated facts is de novo, so the only question was whether the trial court drew the correct legal conclusion from the agreed facts.
Neither party argued the easement was ambiguous. They simply disagreed about what the 1962 grantors intended. Quoting St. Charles County v. Laclede Gas Co., 356 S.W.3d 137 (Mo. banc 2011), the court restated the governing instruction: ascertain the grantor’s intention from the whole of the instrument. It added the rule from Blackburn v. Habitat Development Co., 57 S.W.3d 378 (Mo. App. S.D. 2001), that a court must reject an interpretation producing unreasonable results when a probable and reasonable construction is available.
Read as a whole, the instrument did not stop at the phrase Southern Star emphasized. It also obligated the grantee and its successors to “continue to so sell, or cause to be sold, such gas as long as” gas moves through the pipeline. The court found that clause unconditional, and found that Southern Star’s reading would render it illusory. The panel pointed out that the company’s own construction would have excused it even if the prior owners had rebuilt on the same footprint after the fire.
The phrase “now on said land” is subject to a probable and reasonable construction that refers only to the initial location of a tap and to the initial provision of access to domestic gas service.
Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, Tharp v. Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline, Inc., No. WD88122 (Sept. 22, 2026)
The court also noted what Southern Star had not argued. The company never claimed the new house, or the service requested, was materially different, or that supplying it was more burdensome. A further clause requiring the same consideration for each additional pipeline installed supplied more evidence that the consideration was continuing rather than a single completed act.
A covenant that touches and concerns the land
The result aligns with Hemsath v. City of O’Fallon, 261 S.W.3d 1 (Mo. App. E.D. 2008), where a city promised sewer taps in exchange for permission to run a sewer line across a property. The Eastern District treated that promise as a real covenant, one touching and concerning the land, rather than a personal covenant benefiting only the original grantor. Because it ran with the land, the right to enforce it passed to the later owner. That distinction decides whether a promise in an old instrument is an asset a buyer acquires or a dead letter.
An awkward precedent for the pipeline company
The panel observed, without treating it as controlling, that Southern Star had lived with the opposite reading before. In Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline, Inc. v. Murray, 190 S.W.3d 423 (Mo. App. S.D. 2006), a virtually identical 1967 easement was before the Southern District. The record there showed a modular home placed on the burdened land in 1992 and a tap made to serve it at that time, benefiting a later owner and a dwelling that did not exist when the easement was granted. Given the identical language, the court said it is difficult to reconcile Murray with the interpretation Southern Star advanced here.
The damages award did not survive the record
Southern Star won one point, and it is the part of the opinion most likely to change how a lawyer handles the next case. The trial court had awarded the Tharps $2,466.50 on the breach of contract claim. The stipulated facts said nothing about monetary damages. The only support for the figure was an exhibit submitted along with a proposed amended judgment, which the appellate court held was plainly outside the summary judgment record. Missouri courts determine and review summary judgment on the Rule 74.04(c) record, not the whole trial court file.
The consequence was not a remand for a damages hearing. Because the Tharps had moved for a full and final judgment on every pleaded claim, relying only on stipulated facts that did not address damages, and had affirmatively told the trial court no material facts remained in dispute, the court held they had abandoned that prayer for relief. The award was reversed outright. In all other respects the judgment stands, including the order that Southern Star make the tap.
The opinion also contains a pointed footnote about practice. The trial court signed both the original and the amended judgment verbatim as the prevailing party drafted them, one of them on the same day it was submitted. Quoting earlier Missouri cases, the panel encouraged trial courts to approach a proposed order “with the sharp eye of a skeptic and the sharp pencil of an editor.” The damages problem is a direct illustration of what happens when that editing does not occur.
What Missouri property owners should take from this
Most owners of land crossed by a pipeline, a power line or a water main have never read the instrument that put it there. Many of those instruments, particularly mid-century ones, traded the corridor for something concrete: a tap, a connection, a right of access, a share of a well. Those promises are recorded, which under Section 442.380 RSMo is where they belong, and they may still be enforceable by the current owner.
Practical steps
1. Pull the recorded instrument, not the title commitment summary. A title exception will tell you an easement exists. Only the recorded document tells you what the grantee promised in return. Our work on easements, access and well agreements usually begins here.
2. Make the request in writing. The 1962 instrument conditioned the tap on the grantor’s written request. The Tharps made one in 2023, and that written request is what framed the breach.
3. Ask whether the promise is a real covenant. A promise that touches and concerns the land runs with it. A purely personal promise to a long-dead grantor does not.
4. Check the instrument before you close. An unexploited benefit is worth money, and an unrecognized burden costs it. Both belong in the diligence file when buying or selling property.
5. Prove damages inside the record you are relying on. If the case is going up on stipulated facts, the stipulation has to carry the damages, or the claim for them can be treated as abandoned.
In Wildwood, St. Louis County, Franklin County and the counties around them, these corridors are everywhere: interstate gas lines, rural electric distribution, shared wells and access drives among neighboring tracts. The instruments creating them are short, old and frequently forgotten. This opinion is a reminder that a forgotten instrument can still be worth reading, whether the question becomes a property or title dispute or a broader real estate question.
Helpful resources
The coverage below is drawn from several vantage points and labeled by ownership, so you can weigh each account and reach your own conclusion.
Full opinion, Tharp v. Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline, Inc., No. WD88122 (Sept. 22, 2026) · Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District (Missouri state judiciary; primary source).
Western District opinion index by hand-down date · Missouri Court of Appeals (Missouri state judiciary; primary source).
Section 442.380 RSMo, instruments to be recorded and Section 442.390 RSMo, notice imparted from time of filing · Missouri Revisor of Statutes (Missouri state government; primary source).
Case summaries for September 18–24, 2026 · The Missouri Bar (statewide bar association, member-funded; editorial summaries, not the opinions themselves).
Related on this site: The Inherited House Nobody Appraised · Missouri’s New Sale Leaseback Law · What Missouri’s Section 534.602 Squatter Law Actually Requires
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This article is provided for general educational purposes only and is not legal or tax advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Haake Law Group PC or Derek R. Haake. Statutes, court rules and case law change, appellate opinions may be modified on rehearing or transfer, and outcomes depend on the specific facts and documents involved. Verify any statute, rule or opinion against the official source and consult a licensed attorney about your own situation before acting.