The United States of America, the State of West Virginia, and every corporate body politic heretofore or hereafter created by the Constitution or statutes of the state, and every corporation heretofore or hereafter organized under the laws of, or authorized to transact business in, the state, for any purpose of internal improvement for which private property may be taken or damaged for public use as authorized in section two of this article, shall have the right of eminent domain, and may exercise the same to the extent and in the manner provided in this chapter, and subject to the restrictions and limitations provided by law.
W. Va. Code § 54-1-1
Bodies which may exercise power of eminent domain
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case 211 W. Va. 466 - Spencer v. Beverage (2002)
Most recently applied in Mountain Valley Pipeline v. Brian C. and Doris W. McCurdy (November 2016)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: West Virginia Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain West Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.