The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-05-19
GAS MEN TRIUMPHANT
"FLAMBEAU LAW" SUSTAINED BY
THE SUPREME COURT.
Covers the Ground Pretty Thoroughly
for an Ice Company.

The Supreme Court yesterday handed
down a decision that is very important in
view of the fact that the gas men and
manufacturers of the gas territory are
making prosecutions under the "fiambeau
law" against prospectors and oil men who
are searching for oil and in their search
are permitting large amounts of gas to es-
cape. The law under which the prosecu-
lions are based, as passed by the Legisla-
ture in 1898, makes it a penal offense for
any one to willfully permit gas to escape.
The case was that of the Andrew j. Towns
end against the State. Townsend was con-
victed in the Blackboard Circuit Court under
the law for burning gas in what is known
as al fiambeau. The case was appealed and
in the defense Townsend attacks the con-
stitutionality of the law. The court aftirms
the decision of the lower court in an ably
written opinion by Justice McCabe
Townsend did not deny the fact that he
had burned gas in hambeau, but made as
his defense that the law was in conflict
with the Constitution, in the fact that the
Constitution provided that no person shall
be deprived of life, liberty or property with
out due process of law; the declaration that
all men have certain inalenable rights,
among which are life, liberty and the pur-
suit of happiness; the stipulation that no
mans property shall be taken by law with
out just compensation, and the provision
that the Legislature shall not grant to any
citizen or class of citizens privileges are
immunities which upon the same terms
shall not equally belong to all citizens.
The court states very briefly that most
of these assertions are made good by ar
gument. On the subject of the guarantee
of the pursuit of happiness, Judge McCabe
says:
THE inalienable right to pursue ones
own happiness must necessarily be subject
to the same right in all others, and that
when that right is asserted in such a man
ner as to conflict with the equal right of
the pursuit of happiness on the part of
others, 1t ceases to be right, and be-
comes a wrong. And if it makes a man
happy to waste natural gas for the want
of which others are made to suffer and be
unhappy as the direct result of such waste,
then pursuit o. happiness in this manner
becomes a positive wrong and not an in
alienable right" The court discussed at
some length the proposition that this law
deprives the owners of gas wells of their
property without compensation and holds
that this act simply forbids the waste of
gas by an owner in such a manner as to
injure others and that the Legislature al
ways has the power to prevent person
from making use of his own property in
such a way as to inJure, his neighbors.
while a person has the ownership of all
gas drawn through his pipes to the surface
he has no such a claim to the gas lying IN
the general reservoir beneath the ground
as will enable him to prevent adjoining
landowners from drilling wells to tap the
same reservoir and use gas from it. And
that one person having driven We'll may
be prevented from needless wasting of
gas from which others have an equal right
to draw to supply their needs. The owner
ship Of gas is like that of wild animals or
fish, which have long been protected from
unnecessary and wholesale destruction"