A longstanding legal case in Carroll County involving a family and a gravel mining company has been granted one last gasp in court.
At issue is whether previous court decisions stand or whether they were arrived at by error in a land dispute that has pitted the family against the company for nearly a decade.
In 2010, 15 members of the Jackson family, all descendants of Queenie Magnolia Jackson, filed suit against Baldwin Sand & Gravel, Jerry “Rocky” Steen Jr., J.J. Ferguson Sand & Gravel and J.J. Ferguson holdings over land the Jacksons said had been legally held in their family since the 1950s when their father purchased it. The Jacksons claimed they were owed payments for mining leases on the land.
Rocky Steen of Greenwood, who worked for Ferguson, died in late March this year, and Baldwin Sand & Gravel, which bought J.J. Ferguson, is now owned by APAC (Asphalt Paving and Concrete) of Greenwood. Over the years, their lawyers filed countersuits claiming their right to pursue mining on the disputed land, saying that Queenie Jackson’s husband, Peter, had relinquished the land and that it had passed on to other legal heirs who passed it on to them.
All the while, members of the Jackson clan continued living on the acreage they claimed, in trailers obscured by the woods surrounding large open gravel pits.
In 2015, one of those occupants, Charlie Jackson, had his trailer parked on acreage that had been granted by a judge to Steen and Baldwin and was ordered to move his trailer across the road to land agreed to be the Jacksons’ by January 2016.
Charlie remained in place, and criminal proceedings ensued in Justice Court. The charges were trespassing and contempt of court.
Jackson appeared at a November hearing, his wrists and ankles shackled, and told the judge, “Your honor, that’s the land I was born on.” He asked for legal counsel and was denied; then he was sent to jail for four months until he agreed to comply.
In the case’s most recent hearing last week, Charlie’s sister C.J. arrived at the Vaiden courthouse with four large boxes of documents in tow on a rolling cart. Inside were thousands of pages of well-worn documents marking the ins and outs of a complicated case that, the family says, represents their father’s and mother’s legacy, their rightful inheritance and the hope of due process.
Lawyers for Rocky Steen and Baldwin Sand & Gravel, Sam Fonda of Greenwood and Todd Burwell of Ridgeland, told Chancery Court Judge D. Joseph Kilgore that they just wanted the whole situation to be over.
“We’ve been in this thing for a long time,” Fonda said.
For the Jacksons, four of whom were in court including C.J., Charlie and two brothers, getting one more chance to be heard, through their attorney, Lydia Blackmon of Lexington, was welcome relief.
“My clients do want to proceed,” Blackmon said.
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The Jackson family cemetery plot lies on land not disputed by the gravel company and passed down through their parents, Queenie and Peter. Modest headstones stand neatly kept in a stand of pines off Highway 430 between Black Hawk and Vaiden.
Peter, said daughter C.J., was a guitar player in his early years, the first cousin of Joe Jackson, with whom he sometimes played. Joe would become father of the legendary musical Jackson family, including youngest son Michael and his siblings.
Peter died in 1970 under mysterious circumstances, gunned down by a man who had previously been a close friend.
When he died, according to the Jacksons and their boxes of documents, all rights and royalties from the land their father owned, including the acreage later disputed, were turned over to Queenie. She was paid royalties on the gravel contract until she died in 1996.
The land was never sold, say the Jacksons, and they never stopped paying taxes on it. A permit filed by Baldwin with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality in early 2010 showed Queenie still listed as the landowner.
But in September 2010, in Carroll County Chancery Court, Rocky Steen and Baldwin claimed they owned the land that they had gotten from another set of heirs.
The Jacksons never saw another penny in royalties after Queenie’s death and were told by the court in 2010 that their ownership of the disputed land amounted to 53 acres, not the 568 they had always known as theirs.
A volley of suits and countersuits ensued, including appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court that results in rulings for the gravel company.
The Jacksons have seen a number of lawyers come and go, including Blackmon, who filed one of their Supreme Court motions for them but then disappeared from the case for a number of years.
Kilgore handed down a final ruling in 2014 favoring Steen and Baldwin’s claim of ownership.
Meanwhile, the land has continued to produce thousands of tons of gravel and sand, and Charlie and his brother, Willie, have lived in separate trailers among the earth-moving machines, the trees and their memories of the family’s original homestead, long ago burned to the ground.
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Last week’s hearing involved three issues brought to Judge Kilgore: one, the contempt charges against Charlie; the second, a motion from the Jackson’s most recent attorney, Derek Hall of Jackson, to withdraw his representation; and the third, a motion filed by Hall for clarification of the final judgment.
Steen-Baldwin attorneys told the court that although Charlie Jackson had moved his trailer and was now in compliance with Kilgore’s previous order, Charlie was still behaving contemptuously.
The lawyers contended that just after Steen died, on the weekend of his funeral, there were calls to the gravel company office saying Charlie was going to move his mobile home back. An employee went to the site and said he saw Charlie, on Ferguson property, with his hand in his pocket as if he had a gun.
Charlie, a war veteran who is deaf in one ear and spent the past winter in jail, sat quietly shaking his head.
The judge said whether or not it happened, it wasn’t a matter for his court. He found Charlie had complied with his previous order.
Appearing on behalf of attorney Hall, associate Megan Timbs told the court that their withdrawal of representation stemmed from an “irremedial breakdown in the relationship with the clients.” Kilgore approved the withdrawal somewhat reluctantly.
“My hesitancy is procedural,” he said. “(Mr. Hall and Ms. Timbs) opened the door and dropped a bomb, then ran for the door to get out of here.” Still, he approved. Timbs moved down the front row, shaking hands with each member of the family before exiting the courtroom.
Kilgore hesitated before ruling on the clarification motion — an opportunity for the Jackson family to bring up any errors or questions about previous procedures that might have affected the final judgment.
He cited many problems with communication between the family and their attorneys over time. He reiterated that the issue of who owned the land had been decided and that decision was final. He said the family needed to understand that there would be no more continuances.
Then he granted Blackmon and her clients, the Jacksons, an extension until Aug. 9 at 1:30 to prepare the case for clarification.
“This is a hearing to determine whether the ruling in February 2014 was the final ruling in the case,” Kilgore said. “It is not a retrial of the property case but a briefing of the court on issues to be reconsidered.”
C.J. Jackson, dressed in a peach chiffon hat and a blouse to match, began gathering up the piles of papers she had spread across a table throughout the hearing and stuffed them back in boxes. Her brothers slapped backs and shook hands as the courtroom emptied around them.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
