Langlinais v. Geophysical Service, Inc.

• Citation: 237 La. 585,111 So.2d 781
• Decision Date: 27 April 1959
• Docket Number: No. 43572,43572
• Parties: Lovelace LANGLINAIS v. GEOPHYSICAL SERVICE, INC.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

Page 781

111 So.2d 781

237 La. 585

Lovelace LANGLINAIS v. GEOPHYSICAL SERVICE, INC.

No. 43572.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

April 27, 1959.

Rehearing Denied June 1, 1959.

Davidson, Meaux, Onebane & Donohoe, Lafayette, for defendant-appellant.

J. E. Kibbe, Marcus A. Broussard, Abbeville, Bailey & Mouton, Lafayette, for plaintiff-appellee.

HAMITER, Justice.

The defendant, Geophysical Service, Inc., is appealing from a judgment condemning it to pay to plaintiff, Lovelace Langlinais, the sum of $7,526.57 as damages sustained by a portion of his 1953 rice crop. Plaintiff has neither appealed nor answered defendant's appeal.

As a basis for the demand for damages the petition alleged that '* * * on or about the 26th day of May, 1953, employees of said Geophysical Service, Inc., while carrying on geophysical operations on behalf of their said employer, and acting within the course and scope of their said employment, entered upon petitioner's rice crop and exploded or caused to be exploded a charge or charges of dynamite, which was of such violence and force that it caused a portion of petitioner's levee, on the east side of his crop, to break and collapse; and that large quantities of water flowed from the marsh, through the aforesaid break in petitioner's levee, onto petitioner's rice crop.'

In its answer the defendant, after denying that the referred to exploding dynamite charge was responsible for the demages suffered by plaintiff's rice crop, affirmatively averred that heavy and unusual rains caused water to rise and exert excessive pressure against the levee which, as a result of such pressure, ultimately gave way. It further alleged that its employees were in no manner negligent in their operations.

Plaintiff has been and is a tenant rice farmer of a tract of land located in Vermilion Parish that is owned by D. O. Guidry and the Green Estate. On the east side of the property is a drainage canal (the south end thereof connects with the Intercoastal Canal) which, at one time, often overflowed the adjacent lands. In the late spring of 1951 plaintiff caused a levee to be built along the west bank of such drainage canal (eastern edge of his rice field) for the purpose of protecting his crop from overflow during periods of high water. Thereafter this protection levee held firmly against the highest water of the canal.

On May 26, 1953, after the water in the drainage canal had receded somewhat from its peak and while plaintiff's rice crop of that year was approximately seven weeks old, employees of the defendant came onto the land in question to conduct seismographic tests (the defendant was operating as the agent of a mineral lessee, pursuant to an oil and gas lease granted by the landowners although a copy of it is not in the record, and with the permission of plaintiff); and between two-thirty and three o'clock p.m. of that day they set off a dynamite charge there, in a hole drilled to a depth of about fifty feet, at a spot referred to as 'Shot Point No. 26.' Later (within an hour and a half) one of plaintiff's farm hands discovered a break in the protection levee, extending from its top to its bottom and being twelve to fifteen feet wide, through which water from the drainage canal was entering the rice field and producing the damages for which payment is demanded herein.

In resisting the demand the defendant first argues, to quote from the brief of its counsel, that 'plaintiff has utterly failed to establish that there is any causal connection between the explosion of Shot Point No. 26 and the break in the levee * * *.' We do not agree. Plaintiff proved (and this is uncontradicted) that the protection levee was approximately six feet high, eight to ten feet wide at the top, twenty feet wide at the bottom, and soundly constructed; and that, despite the unusually high water which existed in the drainage canal several days previous to the exploding of the dynamite charge, there had been no overflowing of the levee to cause its erosion. Also, it was shown that plaintiff, because of such excessive water, had kept the levee under daily surveillance. On this point some of his farm hands testified that they had walked the levee several times a day to inspect it, and that on no inspection trip prior to the explosion had they observed therein any weak places, leaks, breaks, or other defects. One of these witnesses (Eves Hargrove who was not working for plaintiff at the time of the trial) further stated that he was at the pumping station, located beside the Intercoastal Canal on the south side of the rice field, when he saw defendant's employees come onto the land during the day of May 26, 1953; and that he then walked from such station along the protection levee to Shot Point No. 26--a route which included the spot where the break later occurred.

On arriving at Shot Point No. 26, Hargrove, according to his testimony, watched the exploding of the dynamite charge which occurred there. Shortly thereafter he walked back to the pumping station (but not along the levee), some 3,000 feet away, where he noticed an unusual amount of water coming through a small ditch that served to drain off the rice field. Immediately he began walking the levee to inspect it, and eventually he came upon the break located approximately 2,300 feet from such station.

Other helpers of plaintiff testified that they were working about a quarter of a mile from the break (also approximately the same distance from Shot Point No. 26); that they heard the explosion and felt a distinct tremor resulting from it; and that thereafter they noticed a perceptible rise of water in the field and Hargrove's signalling them to come over to the levee. These witnesses could not fix definitely the time interval between the explosion and such signalling, but they estimated it variously as being between one hour and an hour and a half. On arriving at the break they, along with Hargrove, sought to repair the levee; but their efforts were of no avail because of the fast and strong flow of the water.

In view of the facts detailed above we can discern no reasonable explanation for the levee's collapse other than that it was caused by the explosion.

Of course, as before shown, the answer of the defendant contains affirmative averments that the disintegration resulted from abnormally heavy rainfall and too much water pressure against the levee. However, there is no satisfactory evidence in the record to substantiate them.

Too, the defendant makes much of the fact that the levee collapsed about 820 feet from Shot Point No. 26, whereas there was no like result at a location 275 feet from that point. This indicates, its counsel argue, that the levee was weak at the locus of the break. Perhaps it was weaker at some places than at others, and that some portions thereof could withstand explosion tremors while others could not. But protection levees near rice fields are not built to hold against the effects of dynamiting operations. They are...