West Edmond Salt Water Disposal Ass'n v. Rosecrans

• Decision Date: 11 July 1950
• Docket Number: No. 33712,33712
• Citation: 204 Okla. 9,226 P.2d 965
• Parties: WEST EDMOND SALT WATER DISPOSAL ASS'N et al. v. ROSECRANS et al.
• Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court

Page 965

226 P.2d 965

204 Okla. 9

WEST EDMOND SALT WATER DISPOSAL ASS'N et al. v. ROSECRANS et al.

No. 33712.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

July 11, 1950.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 3, 1950.

Appeal Dismissed Feb. 26, 1951.

See 71 S.Ct. 500.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Salt water contained in an underground formation or stratum is fugacious and migratory in its nature, and, like oil, gas, and other fugacious minerals, is not the absolute property of the owner of the land under which it lies, unless reduced to possession by him. When, by migration or percolation it passes beyond the boundary of the land under which it lies, the qualified ownership and right to reduce to possession are then vested in the owner of the land under which the salt water may be found.

2. Where oil companies desirous of disposing of salt water produced from their wells by contract with the owner of a tract of land obtained the right to inject such salt water into an abandoned well upon said land, thereby forcing such salt water into an underground formation or stratum which likewise contains salt water, and the salt water so injected commingles with the salt water with which such formation is saturated, and migrates and percolates into that part of said formation underlying adjoining lands, without injury or damage to the owner of such adjoining lands, and without depriving him of the possession, use and enjoyment of his land, or any part thereof, or restricting him in the exercise of any right in connection therewith, there is no taking or damaging of the property of such adjoining land owner which would make the oil companies liable to him under the provisions of Art. 2, section 23, of the Constitution. The governing principle in such case is that the oil companies, who in injecting salt water into such well stand in the shoes of the land owner upon whose land the well is located, could use the land for such lawful purposes, but would be liable to the adjoining land owner for any injury or damage occasioned to him thereby.

Earl Pruet, T. Murray Robinson, both of Oklahoma City, for plaintiffs in error.

Walace Hawkins, Dallas, Tex., W. R. Wallace, Oklahoma City for Magnolia Petroleum Company.

Wm. C. Liedtke, Russell G. Lowe, Redmond S. Cole, all of Tulsa for Gulf Oil Corporation.

Ralph W. Garrett, Robert L. Imler, both of Tulsa for Sinclair-Prairie Oil Company.

Don Emery, Rayburn L. Foster, R. B. F. Hummer, R. M. Williams, all of Bartlesville, Harry D. Turner, Oklahoma City for Phillips Petroleum Company.

W. H. Brown, Oklahoma City for Anderson-Prichard Oil Corporation.

George Hazlett, Cleveland, Ohio for Sohio Petroleum Company.

D. A. Richardson, Oklahoma City, Cantrell, Carey & McCloud, Oklahoma City, for defendants in error.

Mac Q. Williamson, Attorney General, Fred Hansen, First Assistant Attorney General, Amicus Curiae.

LUTTRELL, Justice.

This action was brought by L. T. Rosecrans and others as plaintiffs against the defendant The West Edmond Salt Water Disposal Association, and the oil companies composing such Association, all of whom were engaged in the production of oil in what is known as The West Edmond Oil Field. The amended petition of plaintiffs contained five causes of action. The first cause was for ejectment; the second for injunction or prohibit a continuing trespass by defendants upon the land of plaintiffs; the third for a money judgment for mesne profits; the fourth for damages temporary in character to the land of plaintiffs, and the fifth for exemplary or punitive damages. The trial court overruled defendants' demurrer to the evidence as to the first, third, and fifth causes of action, and their motion for directed verdict at the close of all the evidence, and submitted the case to the jury on the first, third, and fifth causes of action, withdrawing from the consideration of the jury the second cause of action, which sought an injunction, and sustaining the demurrer to the evidence as to the fourth cause of action. The jury returned a verdict for plaintiffs on the first, third, and fifth causes of action, but the verdict on the fifth cause of action for exemplary damages was, on motion for new trial, disallowed by the trial court, and judgment upon said fifth cause of action rendered in favor of defendants. Defendants appeal from the judgment of the trial court on the first and third causes of action, and plaintiffs cross appeal from the action of the court in disallowing the verdict for exemplary damages.

Plaintiffs' amended petition in their first cause of action alleged that plaintiffs were the owners of a 160 acre tract of land located in Oklahoma County, and within the area of what is known as the West Edmond Oil Field or pool; that the defendants were injecting salt water in great quantities in a well located in the center of a 40 acre tract adjoining the land of plaintiffs on the west, and that the salt water so injected into said well was forced through the porous stratum into which it was injected and carried in an easterly direction into the stratum underlying the land of plaintiffs; that in so doing the defendants took the property of plaintiffs in said subsurface structure for their own benefit as a reservoir for the said salt water, and occupied the stratum to the exclusion of plaintiffs, and to their detriment. In the first cause of action they asked that the defendants be ejected from their land and the possession thereof restored to the plaintiffs. In their second cause of action they sought to enjoin the defendants from continuing to inject salt water into said well. In their third cause of action they alleged that defendants had become liable to the plaintiffs for the mesne profits, or profits accruing to defendants by reason of the taking and detention of plaintiffs' land by forcing the salt water into it, and prayed for recovery of such profits. In their fourth cause of action they alleged that the acts of the defendants had resulted in physical damages to the property of plaintiffs, which could be remedied by the use of labor and money, and asked for the reasonable expense of restoring the property in the sum of $25,000.00. In the fifth cause of action they asked for punitive damages for the wanton, arbitrary and oppressive disregard on the rights of plaintiffs by the defendants.

In their answer defendants admitted that they were injecting salt water into said well, after having obtained the permission of the Corporation Commission and the State Planning and Resources Board to do so; denied that the salt water had migrated or percolated into the property of the plaintiffs, and further alleged that if, from the proof, it appeared that salt water injected into said well had migrated into the stratum into which it was injected and under the land of plaintiffs, that no damage or injury was sustained by plaintiffs by reason thereof for the reason that the stratum into which the salt water was injected was saturated with salt water long prior to the time the defendants began the injection of salt water into said well. In their reply plaintiffs alleged that the Corporation Commission and the Planning and Resources Board were without legal power, authority, and jurisdiction to make any order which would deprive plaintiffs of their constitutional or legal rights asserted in this action, and that if given such effect said orders were void as violative of the Constitution of Oklahoma and the Constitution of the United States, and that the defendants were estopped to claim that said orders precluded recovery by plaintiffs.

From the evidence and the admissions of the parties it appears that The West Edmond Salt Water Disposal Association is a joint association composed of the individual oil companies also made defendants in the action, and perhaps other oil companies, all of whom were producing oil in The West Edmond Oil Field or pool; that one of these defendants, Sohio Petroleum Company, held an oil and gas lease on the property of plaintiffs, upon which property no well had been drilled; that immediately west of the property of plaintiffs, in the center of a 40 acre tract adjoining the land of plaintiffs, was located an abandoned oil well know as the Robson well, and that defendants purchased from the owners of that land the right or permission to inject into said dry and abandoned well, in a stratum or formation known as the Hoover-Tonkawa formation, salt water piped to said dry and abandoned well from other wells operated by defendants in the West Edmond field, which were producing salt water in considerable quantities along with oil and gas. From the evidence it further appears that this Hoover-Tonkawa formation was a porous sand formation or series some 500 feet thick underlying the 40 acre tract upon which the abandoned well was located, and underlying also the land of plaintiffs and the entire West Edmond oil field, said formation being 4500 feet below the surface of the land; that said formation was completely saturated with salt water, and that no oil or gas was being or could be produced therefrom.

It also appears that the abandoned well had been so plugged and cemented that all oil sands below and above the Hoover-Tonkawa formation were protected from the salt water injected into said well, so that there was no possibility that the injection of salt water into it would in any way injure any other formation or strata in said field from which oil or gas or fresh water was being or could be produced. The salt water was injected into the abandoned well with considerable force. The salt water encroachment on the West Edmond field, so far as the Hoover-Tonkawa formation was concerned, came from the west, so that any movement in the water confined in said formation would be toward the east, and the testimony of plaintiffs' witnesses was that the injection of the salt water into the abandoned well caused a further or more accelerated movement of the salt water from the west to the...