Dismissal of suit over Arkansas pipeline spill upheld

U.S. appeals court affirms ruling that denied class-action status in Exxon Mobil case

FILE — Exxon Mobil Pipeline workers inspect a split in a section of the Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower on April 15, 2013.
FILE — Exxon Mobil Pipeline workers inspect a split in a section of the Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower on April 15, 2013.

Exxon Mobil prevailed Thursday when a federal appeals court panel affirmed a lower court's ruling that decertified a class-action lawsuit against the oil giant and dismissed it.

Four property owners in central Arkansas filed the original lawsuit after the March 29, 2013, rupture of the Pegasus pipeline, which spilled tens of thousands of gallons of heavy crude oil into Mayflower's Northwoods subdivision, drainage ditches and a cove of Lake Conway.

A three-judge panel of the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the March 2015 decision by U.S. District Judge Brian Miller in Little Rock. Miller had earlier granted class-action status to the lawsuit but later reversed course and dismissed the case.

Miller decided he had been wrong to grant class-action status to landowners whose property is crossed by the Pegasus line, which extends from Corsicana, Texas, to Patoca, Ill. The pipeline, built in 1947-48, also runs through Arkansas and Missouri. A class action stood to affect thousands of landowners in the four states.

Neither Exxon Mobil nor attorneys for the original plaintiffs, Arnez and Charletha Harper and Rudy and Betty Webb, had much to say Thursday.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Todd Spitler said only: "We agree with the decision of the court."

Thomas Thrash, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an email that he and others involved in the case "were very disappointed in the decision."

[EMAIL UPDATES: Get free breaking news alerts, daily newsletters with top headlines delivered to your inbox]

"We have not made the decision as to whether we will appeal further," Thrash added.

The Webbs live in Conway but own property in Mayflower. The Harpers live in Mayflower.

The lawsuit had sought to rescind the prospective plaintiffs' easements in all four states and to force Exxon Mobil to remove or replace the pipeline. Alternatively, the lawsuit sought to recover damages resulting from what it contended was Exxon Mobil's breach of contract and diminished property values.

Exxon Mobil shut down the roughly 850-mile-long pipeline shortly after the spill. Only a 211-mile segment in Texas has reopened.

Like Miller, the appeals court panel found a lack of commonality among the landowners in the four states -- an essential element in a class-action case.

Establishing breach of contract "would require examination of how Exxon's operation of the pipeline affects the plaintiffs, which, as the district court found, varies depending on where individual class members' property is located, as well as many other factors," the panel's opinion said.

"Too many individual issues predominate over common ones," the panel added.

Further, even if the easements were similar or identical, it said, there would be issues of conflicting contract, property and tort laws in the four states.

With class-action status removed, the panel said individual claims by the Harpers and the Webbs failed because the easement contracts did not even require the oil company to perform maintenance or repairs. Further, both couples have conceded that the Exxon Mobil pipeline has not caused "any damage to any crops, timber, or fences" on their property, the appeals panel wrote.

"Instead they claim the pipeline is composed of 'bad pipe' and is 'worn out,'" the panel wrote. "Such vague allegations alone cannot provide the basis for these claims."

Attorneys for the plaintiffs also had argued that Exxon Mobil had withheld important documents until days before the district court entered its order -- documents that they said provided "newly discovered evidence," the panel said.

But the panel said Miller had found that this new evidence did "not address ... the heart" of his judgment and that the Harpers and the Webbs had not suffered any actual damages.

"As far as the Webbs' and Harpers' allegations that Exxon's late production of discovery documents should have prevented the grant of summary judgment, they fail to explain why whatever was produced late would have changed the result," the panel said.

"Our own review ... does not convince us the district court clearly abused its discretion in concluding that the additional evidence the Webbs and Harpers sought to introduce would not have, as the district court said, 'produce[d] a different result,'" it added.

State Desk on 05/12/2017

Upcoming Events