While most courts have held that utility easements for electricity or telephone purposes can be used for cable television and other such purposes, see. e.g., Henley v. Continental Cablevision of St. Louis County, Inc., 692 S.W.2d 825 (Mo. Ct. App. 1985), a small number have gone the other way on the ground that easements are limited rights to use the land of another and that the use cannot exceed the scope of the original grant, see, e.g., Marcus Cable Assocs. v. Krohn, 90 S.W.3d 697, 699 (Tex. 2002).
The Eighth Circuit recently took the minority approach in Barfield v. Sho-Me Power Elec. Coop., 852 F.3d 795 (8th Cir. 2017), holding that a rural electric cooperative’s easements did not allow use of fiber-optic cable installed alongside electrical lines to serve the general public. The court emphasized that an easement is a “right to use land for particular purposes,” and interpreted a statute that requires consideration for “expanded use of the property beyond that which is described in the instrument of conveyance.” Mo. Rev. Stat. §523.283.1. The court distinguished Henley by noting that the easements here were for electricity uses only and not telephone use and that “any doubt concerning an easement’s scope should be resolved in favor of the servient owner’s free and untrammeled use of the land.”