Atlas Pipe Line Co. v. Sterling

• Decision Date: 07 August 1933
• Docket Number: No. 409.,409.
• Parties: ATLAS PIPE LINE CO. v. STERLING et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Texas

4 F. Supp. 441

ATLAS PIPE LINE CO. v. STERLING et al.

No. 409.

District Court, E. D. Texas, Tyler Division.

August 7, 1933.

Saye, Smead & Saye, of Longview, Tex., for complainant.

The Attorney General of Texas, for respondents.

Before HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge, and GRUBB and WILSON, District Judges.

PER CURIAM.

Plaintiff, a common carrier pipe line company engaged in transporting oil in interstate commerce, complains of the orders and actions of the Railroad Commission in connection with its efforts to prevent wasteful practices in the East Texas oil fields, as violative, as to it, of the commerce clause and of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The orders and actions specifically complained of are: (1) The order of the commission requiring it to install meters to enable the commission to determine the amount of oil transported by it; (2) the orders requiring it to file with the commission, on various forms, reports required of transporters of oil. These reports in substance have to do with the source, the amount, and the character, as to legality, of the oil tendered to and transported by the pipe line. (3) The demands of the commission that it, or its duly authorized agents, the Attorney General, or his assistants or agents, be allowed inspection of its books and records when they may deem it necessary.

In general, it is claimed that the statutes authorizing such demands and actions, are in their tenor, and because of the penalties imposed, unconstitutional. It is further claimed that, if the statutes are valid, the orders and actions of the commission under them are oppressive and burdensome beyond the grant of the statute.

We think it perfectly clear that, as applied to plaintiff, the complained of statutes are valid; that the requirements they make in no manner infringe upon any of its constitutional rights. They merely provide for such regulatory steps and measures as are reasonable, necessary, and proper to prevent the handling of oil made by the statute contraband for handling, and their terms in no sense impose any burdensome restrictions upon interstate commerce, or take plaintiff's property without due process, or deny it the equal protection of the laws. Plaintiff's broad position comes in the end to no more than an insistence upon its right to transport, in violation of the express prohibitions of the statute, oil which has been illegally produced. No reason presents itself to our minds for believing that the Legislature, having the authority to conserve the natural resources of the state, is without power to impose upon common carriers by pipe line, inter and intra state, police regulations to make its prohibition against wasteful production effective. The complaint against the penalties as excessive may be disposed of by the observation that there is no proof that, in the absence of an opportunity for hearing on the validity of the statute, these penalties are sought to be applied.

We therefore reject, as without merit, plaintiff's attacks upon the statutes.

Nor do we think any stronger the position taken against the rules and regulations, the orders and requirements of the commission. Certainly it goes without saying that the terms of a statute or the orders and actions of the commission under it might be so burdensome and exacting as in effect to prevent or prohibit, contrary to the Fourteenth...