quality:correction, structural:summarization, linguistic:paraphrasing
Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon

The early mining operations often removed so much of the underground coal that the mines became a hazard to the miners underground and to those residing on the surface. For this reason, the Pennsylvania legislature acted to limit the amount of material that could be removed from the mines below in order to leave sufficient underground support below. Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon involved an action by an individual landowner who sought to prevent a mining operation from violating this law, undermining his or her home. Under Pennsylvania law, the deed also conveyed the right to surface support to the coal company which could thus remove subsurface coal even if that caused subsidence. The coal companies argued in Pennsylvania Coal that they had acquired a right to mine the coal and the right to allow the surface to collapse because these rights had been purchased from the original landowners. The owner's deed conveyed the surface but in express terms reserved the right to remove all the coal. The state and the surface landowners argued that the right to cause surface collapse was not property. The deed provided that the grantee takes the premises with that risk and waives all claim for damages that may arise from mining out the coal. The coal company essentially owned a property right to mine as much as it wished. Over a dissent by Justice Brandeis, the court ruled that Pennsylvania's statute deprived the coal companies of the right to mine their coal.