Humphreys Oil Co. v. Liles

• Decision Date: 18 November 1925
• Docket Number: (No. 547-4286.)
• Citation: 277 S.W. 100
• Parties: HUMPHREYS OIL CO. v. LILES et al.<SMALL><SUP>*</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

277 S.W. 100

HUMPHREYS OIL CO. v. LILES et al.^*

(No. 547-4286.)

Commission of Appeals of Texas, Section B.

November 18, 1925.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals of Tenth Supreme Judicial District.

Action by Mrs. Lizzie Liles and others against the Humphreys Oil Company. Judgment for plaintiffs was affirmed in the Court of Civil Appeals (262 S. W. 1058), and defendant brings error. Affirmed.

C. S. Bradley, of Groesbeck, and Vinson, Elkins, Wood & Sweeton, of Houston, for plaintiff in error.

H. B. Daviss, of Corsicana, for defendants in error.

SPEER, J.

Mrs. Lizzie Liles and others sued the Humphreys Oil Company and others to recover damages for certain oil alleged to have been converted by the defendants, and for the destruction of a "pick up" station belonging to the plaintiffs, resulting in the loss of the value of other oil alleged also to have been converted by the defendants. There was a judgment in the trial court in favor of the plaintiffs in the sum of $30,690. Upon appeal by defendants the Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the judgment of the trial court. 262 S. W. 1058. The principal question presented by this writ of error is one of construction of the plaintiffs' petition. The court submitted the following issues, which were answered as shown, to wit:

"Question No. 1. How many barrels, if any, of the oil that has been heretofore impounded by plaintiffs on the Liles lease, excluding therefrom such oil, if any, as may have originated from any well or wells belonging to the Humphreys Oil Company, did the defendant Humphreys Oil Company, or its agents acting under instructions from said company, take or pump away? Answer: 5,400 barrels.

"Question No. 2. How many barrels, if any, of the oil that could and would have been impounded by the plaintiffs upon the Liles lease were caused to escape and flow down Plummer's creek by the acts of the defendant Humphreys Oil Company and its agents in removing and destroying the floating dam or dams erected on said creek by the plaintiffs for the purpose of impounding oil? Answer: 22,500 barrels.

"Question No. 3. What was the value of the oil inquired about in the two preceding questions at the time same was taken, if you find same was taken by defendant Humphreys Oil Company or at the same time was allowed to escape, if you have answered that any did escape? Answer in the aggregate. Answer: $1.10 per barrel."

Plaintiff in error complains that the plaintiffs' pleadings did not authorize the trial court to submit issue No. 2, and this requires an examination of plaintiffs' second amended petition upon which the case was tried. No question is made but that the pleadings did authorize the submission of question No. 1, so that it will be unnecessary to consider any part of the pleadings except that which bears upon question No. 2.

This petition showed that plaintiffs Lizzie Liles and her minor son owned 144 acres of land so situated with reference to Plummer's creek that waste or fugitive oil from many hundreds of acres of the Mexia oil fields lying above and adjacent to this land drained across plaintiffs' land, and across that certain 18 acres thereof (in which the other plaintiffs owned a lease interest) whereon they had constructed certain dams or traps to impound such waste oil. It specifically alleges:

"That immediately after completing the installation of their retaining dams, storage pools, tanks, etc., for impounding waste oil and establishing their equipment for taking, pumping, and storing oil, on February 20, 1922, plaintiffs immediately began taking possession, and did take possession of waste oil coming into and upon the said 144 acres of land, and did impound and store and reduce to possession vast quantities of waste oil then within their said retaining dams and storage pools. * * * That Field Manager Harvey and the roughnecks and gangmen of the defendants, all of whom were employees and were acting as the agents of the defendants and acting under their express instruction, using all kinds of tools and implements, deliberately and with force tore away and destroyed, 15 times or more, the retaining dams which the plaintiffs continued to reconstruct upon said 144 acres of land for the purpose of reducing to possession, recovering, and storing the waste and fugitive oil that came into and upon said land, * * * and by such unlawful and wrongful acts of constantly and repeatedly tearing out and destroying plaintiffs' retaining dams the defendants have made utterly worthless this once valuable right of plaintiffs to construct and maintain dams and storage tanks for the purpose of and reducing to possession recovering and storing the waste and fugitive oil upon said 144 acres of land by so destroying and preventing plaintiffs from rebuilding said retaining dams or storage tanks. That said right to construct and maintain and operate on said 144 acres of land a system of retaining dams and dikes for reducing to possession, recovering, storing, and owning the waste oil that came from and onto said land was a very valuable right worth many thousands of dollars to the plaintiffs. That plaintiffs owned same and had possession of and were using same when defendants by the wrongful acts heretofore alleged and otherwise unlawfully deprived plaintiffs thereof and of the benefits therefrom. * * * That defendant had constructed and maintained and was operating a very large waste oil gathering system and waste oil station with retaining dams and dikes * * * situated on the Kohlman land only a few hundred feet below down the flow of the creek from the plaintiffs' 144-acre tract of land. That defendants have another and a second system of retaining dams and pumping stations for the gathering of waste oil located just below and within a few hundred feet of this first system of retaining dams and pumping stations, so that all oil which they cause to escape out of plaintiff's 144-acre tract, if not entirely caught by and in defendants' first waste oil pumping station, will be, and was, wholly and effectually retained, taken, and reduced to possession by and in this second system of retaining dams and pumping stations; that all the waste oil which the defendants, by the methods which they employed heretofore referred to and the methods which they otherwise employed, caused to escape from and pass in through plaintiffs' retaining dams and station, was in fact collected by the defendants' said pumping station on the Kohlman land and was converted and sold by the defendants...