BUILDING FAMILY WEALTH

Searching through old family papers stored in manila file folders, I found a couple of stock certificates dating back to October 1947.  Not sure how my family members came into possession of them but I am sure there is a story behind it.  The stocks are for the Montgomery Limestone Company at 15 shares each.  Sometimes, employers, as a perk for their employees would offer to sell shares in the company to those who worked for them.  This gesture has a couple of investments for the employer.  One, by selling shares to the employees it would give employees a sense of ownership about the company they were working for.  Also, the employee is feeding money into the company helping to build wealth not just for the employer but for the employee as well.  After giving it some thought, I wanted to find out what happened to the company.  It’s been 78 years.  Do they still exist?  After doing a Google search, here is what I found.

From 2 different webpages, it gave information regarding the formation of the company - Montgomery Limestone Company (MLC), created in Shelby County in October 1947.  The date of the shares.  So my family member bought the company shares at the beginning of this new business.  Maybe they worked for them.  But, like many things in life, the MLC met its fate 3 years later with dissolution in September 1950. According to court documents, a lawsuit was filed against MLC in November 1949. There was an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court in October 1951.  But the company had already been dissolved and had gone out of business a year earlier in 1950.

So, what happened?  To put a short summary on the story … it seems a Mr. Bearden, who owned 45 acres adjacent to MLC, who was living on his land long before the MLC company took up ownership of their land next door and created the business of a quarry.

Mr. Bearden ran a family farm on the 45 acres of cultivation (farming) and pasture land for cattle and livestock.  At the heart of the lawsuit was a fresh water stream flowing through both properties with the MLC land upstream and the Bearden farm downstream.

The quarry operation was to extract limestone from the ground.  The process required a power driven pump to wash and “remove sludge, rock, limestone, dust, sand, sediments and other impurities” and discharge these elements into the stream of water running through both properties.  The complaint in the lawsuit filed by Mr. Bearden stated that the discharge had discolored the water and created a situation where the water was polluted and “unfit for cattle and livestock consumption.”  There were other complaints in the brief filed such as noise from blasting and running of machinery at all hours of day and night disturbing his family, his tenants' families and his animals.  Blasting was causing his animals to be put in danger from falling rocks and debris. There was also mention of noxious odors and fumes as well.

In the big picture of civil court concepts was the dispute of balancing the interest of one party struggling to keep “his property in status quo” vs the interest “of the public in seeking industrial progress” or the rights of private businesses.

From the Alabama Supreme Court:
“… modifications of individual right must be submitted to, in order that the greater good of the public be conserved and promoted. But there is a limit to this duty to yield, to this claim and right to expect and demand. The water course must not be diverted from its channel, or so diminished in volume, or so corrupted and polluted, as practically to destroy or greatly impair its value to the lower riparian proprietor.’"

Maybe setting up a large messy quarry next to a family farm was not a good idea.

Case - November 1949 MLC vs Bearden.
https://law.justia.com/cases/alabama/supreme-court/1951/54-so-2d-571-1.html
https://al.ltddir.com/companies/montgomery-limestone-company-inc/