## Facts

- C.N. Thomas owned a vacant lot adjoining a store operated by Surplus City U.S.A., Inc., a corporation he wholly owned and which leased the land from him.
- The City of Vicksburg contracted with Harrah’s Vicksburg Corporation for riverfront development; the project required Thomas’s property, and the City filed an eminent-domain action funded by Harrah’s after negotiations failed.
- While condemnation was pending, Harrah’s hired W.G. Yates & Sons Construction Company as general contractor to build a casino with an exterior wall located on the boundary line next to Thomas’s lot.
- From about July through December 1993, construction activities allegedly entered onto the lot and into the airspace above it, including scaffolding and a construction boom crossing the property line.
- Thomas and Surplus repeatedly demanded that Harrah’s and Yates stop the intrusions; the intrusions allegedly continued.
- Thomas sued in chancery court seeking injunctive relief and later damages for trespass.

## Issues

1. Whether trespass liability required proof of negligence or other fault beyond intent to perform the acts that caused the physical invasion.
2. Whether the evidence supported a finding that Harrah’s and/or Yates committed trespass onto plaintiffs’ land or into its airspace.
3. Whether the trial court erred by refusing to submit punitive damages to the jury after the jury awarded only nominal damages.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed in part and reversed, rendered, and remanded in part.
- The court held that trespass is an intentional tort; liability turns on intent to perform the act that results in entry, not intent to enter unlawfully or to violate another’s rights.
- The court treated admitted, recurring encroachments by construction equipment over the boundary line as sufficient to establish intentional trespass, even if defendants attempted to minimize intrusions and viewed some encroachment as unavoidable.
- The court concluded the trial court’s handling of damages, including the relationship between nominal damages and submission of punitive damages, required correction on remand.

## Legal Principles

- Trespass protects a landowner’s right to exclusive possession; physical invasion includes intrusions into the airspace above the land.
- “Intent” for trespass means intent to do the act that causes the invasion; good faith, reasonableness, or lack of intent to violate the law does not negate trespass.
- A defendant that proceeds with conduct knowing it will cross a boundary line commits an intentional trespass even if it uses precautions to reduce the intrusion.
- Repeated trespasses after notice may support consideration of punitive damages under Mississippi law, and nominal damages do not automatically preclude punitive-damages consideration.

## Conclusion

The court clarified that trespass requires only intent to commit the physical acts that cause entry onto another’s land or airspace, not intent to trespass wrongfully, and it sent the case back in part for further proceedings concerning damages, including whether punitive damages should have been submitted to the jury.


Thomas v. Harrah’s Vicksburg Corp., 734 So. 2d 312 (Miss. Ct. App. 1999)