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- Title
FARMERS FIGHT: TEXAS EMINENT DOMAIN AND THE 2015 TEXAS RICE II CASE.
- Authors
Williams, J. Zachary
- Abstract
Synopsis: Since the oil shale boom and the 2016 political races, the use of eminent domain by private entities has garnered a significant amount of attention from the public. States, railroads, oil companies, and landowners all have a stake in the outcome of court cases that determine the rights of landowners who are threatened with the taking of their land by private entities through eminent domain. Some believe the weakening of private common carriers' eminent domain power could slow oil industry growth in the future. In Texas, oil pipeline companies, defining themselves as common carriers, use eminent domain authority granted by the state legislature and the Texas Railroad Commission's permitting process to take ranchers and landowners land for pipeline development. The 2012 Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green Pipeline--Texas decision, known as Texas Rice I, allowed the Texas Supreme Court to define a new public use evidentiary requirement that pipeline companies must meet in order to take landowners' property for the laying of pipelines. The Texas Railroad Commission's T-4 Permits are no longer dispositive of common carrier status in Texas courts. Consequently, pipeline companies may have to defend their takings past a court's summary judgment phase more often in the future. In 2015, the Beaumont Court of Appeals again considered Texas Rice Land Partners' case in Texas Rice II and further added to the evidentiary burden necessary to establish a pipeline's common carrier status. Denbury Green then appealed to the Texas Supreme Court where the parties delivered oral arguments this past September. This article explains why the Texas Supreme Court may partially reject the Beaumont Court of Appeals' additional evidentiary burdens. When the Texas Supreme Court decides the Texas Rice II case, it may reverse the 2015 Beaumont Court of Appeals' decision and conclude that Denbury Green satisfactorily met the Court's existing evidentiary burdens for summary judgment established in Texas Rice I.
- Subjects
TEXAS Rice Land Partners Ltd.; PETROLEUM industry; TEXAS. Supreme Court; DENBURY Green Pipeline-Texas LLC; LEGAL judgments
- Publication
Energy Law Journal, 2016, Vol 37, Issue 2, p445
- ISSN
0270-9163
- Publication type
Article