Mineral Park Land Co. v. Howard

Mineral Park Land Co. (plaintiff) contracted with Howard (defendant), who was building a bridge under a public contract, to let Howard remove an estimated 114,000 cubic yards of gravel and earth from Mineral Park's land at an agreed per-cubic-yard rate; Mineral Park sued after Howard removed only about 50,131 cubic yards from its property and obtained the rest elsewhere, but the trial court found that while Mineral Park had enough material overall, only that smaller amount sat above the water table and could be extracted without great expense and delay, making further extraction financially impracticable, though not literally impossible. The trial court ruled for Mineral Park anyway, and Howard appealed.