William H. Sanders v. Roselawn Memorial Gardens

Summary

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia affirmed in part and reversed in part a Mercer County judgment refusing to enforce a 1958 written compromise agreement between the Sanders landowners and Roselawn Memorial Gardens, Inc. It held the agreement was supported by valid consideration because it settled a good-faith, doubtful claim concerning the cemetery's effect on the plaintiffs' property, and it enforced Roselawn's covenant not to purchase the adjacent Gott tract, holding that neither the covenant nor an individual purchase by Roselawn's sole stockholders for lease back to the cemetery was an unlawful restraint on alienation or trade. The Court affirmed the rulings that Roselawn's widening and improvement of the shared thirty-foot right of way did not unduly interfere with the plaintiffs' easement and that the cemetery's nearby 'service area' was not a nuisance, and it remanded with directions to enter judgment enforcing the agreement.