Henderson Co. v. Thompson
| Decision Date | 24 October 1935 |
| Docket Number | No. 535.,535. |
| Citation | 12 F. Supp. 519 |
| Parties | HENDERSON CO. v. THOMPSON et al. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Texas |
L. M. Fischer, of Amarillo, Tex., and F. W. Fischer, of Tyler, Tex., for complainant.
Wm. McCraw, Atty. Gen., and Archie B. Gray, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondents.
Before HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge, and KENNERLY and McMILLAN, District Judges.
Complainant, a Maine corporation, by bill in equity complains of the members of the Railroad Commission and the Attorney General of the State of Texas, and seeks to enjoin the enforcement so far as it is concerned of House Bill 266, chapter 120, passed by the 44th Legislature, Regular Session 1935 (Vernon's Ann. Civ. St. Tex. art. 6008), and certain orders of the Railroad Commission purporting to have been made in pursuance thereof. The law and orders are attacked upon various constitutional grounds. The federal jurisdiction, both on account of diversity of citizenship and federal question, sufficiently appears. Jurisdiction in equity is also apparent. The case is one for a three-judge court, and a hearing has been had before such court duly organized on application for preliminary injunction. The matter is now submitted on sworn amended bill and answer, various ex parte affidavits, and briefs.
Complainant is the owner and operator of a casing-head gasoline plant located in Hutchinson county, Tex., and is connected with twenty-one wells in the vicinity of that plant. Either by right of ownership or contract it has heretofore been receiving gas from those wells and extracting gasoline therefrom. Thereafter, under contract with Combined Carbon Company, it has been delivering the residue of that gas, less such as it used for plant operation, to said Carbon Company for the manufacture of carbon black.
The orders of the Railroad Commission now under attack attempt to classify complainant's wells as sweet and sour; fourteen of them being designated as sweet, and seven as sour. The purposes for which the sweet wells may be used are limited, with certain exceptions, practically to light and fuel; sour wells may still be used for the extraction of natural gasoline and the manufacture of carbon black.
Complainant attacks the statute and orders issued thereunder on the conventional constitutional grounds, asserting generally that they are confiscatory, unreasonable, and arbitrary, deprive it of its property without due process of law, and impair the obligation of existing contracts. It alleges further that it has and can obtain no market or use for its gas other than that market and use which is now forbidden; that the closing down of its wells will cause its gas to be drawn off by other parties having markets for gas and drawing from the same general reservoir; that the manufacture of carbon black gas is a necessary and useful thing and can be and is being accomplished without waste; that the classification of, and differentiation between, sweet and sour wells is unreasonable and without foundation in fact.
The respondents, while admitting many of complainant's fact allegations, disagree with the conclusions of law drawn therefrom and assert that the statute and orders of the commission are valid police regulations and have a reasonable relation to the conservation of the state's natural resources and prevention of waste; they deny complainant is suffering any irreparable injury by reason of the statute or orders such as to entitle it to an interlocutory injunction, and assert on the other hand that it has or can without loss obtain, for the time being, sufficient gas, both sweet and sour, to satisfy its requirements.
The facts adduced on the hearing by affidavits take such a wide range that it would be impracticable without unduly prolonging this opinion to set them out here. Generally speaking, the affidavits cover the kind and character of the gas reservoir in the Panhandle; the difference between sweet and sour gas; matters with regard to pressure; migration of gas, etc. — all of which has been fully set out and covered in the various other gas cases arising before this court and involving the Panhandle field. Also on complainant's part there is a strong showing as to the absence of waste in the operations of itself or its vendee, the Combined Carbon Company.
The complainant claims that it will need about 30,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day to fill its contract with the Combined Carbon Company. Under the orders of the Railroad Commission it seems to have that much gas available from the seven wells classified as sour. In addition to this 30,000,000 cubic feet, it claims that it needs for plant and lease operation an additional 8,000,000 feet which, according to its affidavits, under the orders of the commission it will be unable to get.
Respondents by affidavits assert complainant can obtain this gas from the fourteen wells...
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MOBIL OIL CORPORATION v. Kelley, Civ. A. No. 7277-72-P.
...of oil wells. See, Railroad Commission v. Rowan & N. Oil Co., 310 U.S. 573, 60 S.Ct. 1021, 84 L.Ed. 1368 (1940); Henderson Co. v. Thompson, 12 F.Supp. 519 (D.C.Tex. 1935); Amazon Petroleum Corp. v. Railroad Comm., 5 F.Supp. 633 (E.D.Tex. 1934). Representative of the decisions in these cases......
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Henderson Co. v. Thompson
...the cases are the same, and the two cases while not consolidated were tried together and may be disposed of in the one opinion. The Henderson case has been before this court before on application for preliminary injunction. Henderson Company v. E. O. Thompson et al., 12 F.Supp. 519. The Por......
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Henderson Co v. Thompson, 397
...for a restraining order was denied. That for a preliminary injunction, promptly heard before three judges, was also denied (D.C.) 12 F.Supp. 519. And on final hearing upon an extensive record a decree was entered denying the permanent injunction and dismissing the bill (D.C.) 14 F.Supp. 328......