## Facts

- A telephone company obtained and recorded a perpetual easement across a Phoenix tract to install and maintain an underground conduit and telephone cable along a specified route.
- The underground facility included multiple lead-covered cables in a conduit with a concrete cap and periodic manholes.
- The tract was later owned by new landowners, who hired an independent contractor (Kelton) to clear and level the land using heavy equipment.
- During the grading work, the contractor’s equipment struck and damaged the buried cable, disrupting service and causing repair costs.
- The trial court found the landowners had actual notice of the cable’s location but found the contractor lacked actual notice and had no duty to examine public records for easements.

## Issues

1. Whether recordation of an easement provides constructive notice to an independent contractor who has no interest in the land’s title.
2. Whether a contractor breaches reasonable care by failing to search title records or otherwise investigate for recorded subsurface easements before performing grading work.

## Decision

- The court held that recordation of the easement did not give constructive notice to the contractor because he was not within the class of persons legally bound to search land records.
- The court affirmed judgment in favor of the contractor, concluding he was not negligent based solely on failure to discover the recorded easement.
- The court left undisturbed findings allocating responsibility to the landowners based on their actual knowledge, with the overall disposition affirmed in part and reversed in part as to other defendants.

## Legal Principles

- Recordation is not “notice to all the world”; it operates as constructive notice only to persons who are obligated to search the record (typically those acquiring or holding interests in the land).
- Independent contractors performing work on land, without an interest in the land’s title and without actual knowledge, have no legal duty to search title records for recorded easements as a prerequisite to exercising reasonable care.
- Negligence liability for damage to buried utilities depends on the actor’s duty and notice; actual knowledge can impose a duty to take reasonable precautions, while constructive notice from recording does not extend to parties not charged with searching the record.

## Conclusion

The court limited constructive notice from recorded instruments to those bound to search the record and held that a contractor with no title interest and no actual notice was not negligent for failing to discover and avoid a buried cable shown only by a recorded easement.


Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Kelton, 79 Ariz. 126, 285 P.2d 168 (Ariz. 1955)