Case Name: R. J. O'BRIEN and DOWELL, Division of Dow Chemical v. Lester PRIMM and Edith PRIMM
Court: Arkansas Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Arkansas
Decision Date: 1967-10-09
Citations: 243 Ark. 186
Docket Number: 5-4261
Parties: R. J. O’BRIEN and DOWELL, Division of Dow Chemical v. Lester PRIMM and Edith PRIMM
Judges: Brown and Fogleman, JJ., dissent.
Reporter: Arkansas Reports
Volume: 243
Pages: 186–201

Head Matter:
R. J. O’BRIEN and DOWELL, Division of Dow Chemical v. Lester PRIMM and Edith PRIMM
5-4261
419 S. W. 2d 323
Opinion delivered October 9, 1967
[Rehearing denied November 6, 1967.]
D. J. Honeycutt and Gaughan & Laney, for appellant.
Melvin Chambers, for appellee.

Opinion:
J. Fred Jones, Justice.
This is an appeal by R. J. O'Brien and Dowell, Division of Dow Chemical, from a judgment for damages in the amount of $4,000.00 rendered by the Ouachita County Circuit Court on a jury verdict in favor of the appellees, Lester and Edith Primm, who were plaintiffs in the trial court.
Appellants contend that verdicts should have been directed for them and designate four points relied on as follows:
"1. The Court erred in not directing verdicts for the defendants at the close of plaintiffs' case and again after plaintiffs were permitted to produce additional testimony and again closed their case.
"2. The Court erred in not directing verdicts for the defendants at the close of all of the testimony and before instructing the jury, and in refusing to enter a verdict for the defendants notwithstanding the verdict of the jury.
"3. The Court erred in not directing verdicts for the defendants inasmuch as there was no substantial evidence of negligence on the part of appellants.
"4. The Court erred in not directing verdicts for the defendants inasmuch as there was no substantial evidence that appellants' acts were the proximate cause of the injuries complained of."
The record reveals the following facts:
In April 1964 appellees owned a forty-acre tract of land in Ouachita County with their home and a tenant house located thereon. Both houses had been supplied, for about eighteen years, with water from a well about thirty feet deep and containing twelve or fourteen feet of good soft water. The appellant, It. J. O'Brien, owned an oil well 550 feet from appellees' water well. The oil well was 2,326 feet deep, and in April 1964, was providing 1.4 barrels of oil per day. Seven hundred feet and four hundred and eighty-five feet, respectively, from appellees ' water well, there were two salt water disposal pits which had been in use for a number of years. The evidence is in conflict as to whether the pits were higher or lower in elevation than appellees' water well.
In April 1964, appellants did what is known as a sand fract job on the oil well, and within a week or so following this operation, a change was noted in the quality of the water in appellees' water well, and the quality of the water rapidly deteriorated until it soon became unfit for human consumption.
There was ample evidence presented by appellees that during the eighteen years prior to the sand fract operation, the water in their well had been palatable and wholesome and that within a month following the sand fract operation, the water became unfit for household use, even for bathing and laundry. Aside from the testimony of the appellees and their witnesses as to the change in the appearance and taste of the water, there was evidence that the water killed flowers watered with it; that new galvanized pipe fittings on hot water tanks had been eaten through with rust and acidic-like corrosion in a period of eighteen months. Undated reports of chemical analyses made after the sand fracting job, showed a variation in total dissolved salts from 60,800 ppm with a pH factor of 6.1 to 851 ppm dissolved salts with a pH factor of 4.9.
Chemical analyses presented by appellants from samples taken from the Primm well on December 7, 1964, and December 7, 1965, show changes as follows: chloride from 160 in 1964. to 340 in 1965; sodinm 80 to 190; total solids 305 to 613 and pH factors from 6.2 to 6.7.
Although the terms "dissolved salts," "chloride " "sodium," and "total solids" are indefinite terms in relation to the problem here, appellees ' undated reports of chemical analyses show a tremendous variation in the chemical contents and acidity of the water, and appellants ' reports show that the named chemicals and solids more than doubled within the one year period from December 1964 to December 1965, and during the same period, the relative acidity of the water changed slightly toward alkalin (pH 7 being- neutral) from 6.2 to 6.7. The analyses reports introduced by appellees bear no date so we are unable to tell when the water attained its highest relative acidity, but appellants' own expert witness testified that pH 4.9 is a strong acid for human consumption or use.
As a matter of fact, appellants offered expert testimony to the effect that the chemical content of the water in appellees' well was consistent with the chemical content of the salt water disposal pits near his land, so certainly there was ample evidence of damage to appellees' water well to go to the jury at the close of appellees' proof, and there was ample evidence to support the jury verdict on this point.
Appellees' witness, Mr. Hogg, testified that appellees' land had a true market value of $20,000.00 with good usable water, and $8,000.00 or $10,000.00 without usable water. Mr. Honeycutt, a witness for appellants, placed the before and after value at $12,500.00 and $11,-000.00, or a difference of $1,500.00 based on the value of the two houses and one acre of ground with each house and $1,000.00 for drilling a new well.
From this testimony and the testimony of appellees as to their inconvenience in having to haul water for domestic use, together with the testimony of Mr. Hamlin as to the two water strata in the area; one 25 to 30 feet deep and the next 360 feet deep; we are of the opinion that appellees submitted ample competent evidence to go to the jury on the over-all damages, and that there was sufficient evidence to support a jury verdict of $4,000.00.
We now come to the most important issue; the negligence of appellants and the proximate cause of the damages to appellees.
The appellants produced considerable testimony while using charts or diagrams drawn to scale, apparently showing detailed diagrams of the oil well, including the location of oil bearing sands, perforations, and the location or locations of cement in or around the casing.
As we understand the testimony, the appellees were trying to prove, by circumstantial evidence, that because of the pressure forced into the oil well in the sand fracting operation, a channeling occurred from the oil well into the water strata of appellees' well thus bringing impurities from the oil well to appellees' water well, and that appellants were negligent in applying the pressure they did apply in bringing this about.
Appellants were attempting to disprove appellees' theory by showing that even with a pressure of 3,500 pounds per square inch, a channeling did not occur as evidenced by no sudden drop in pressure on a pressure gauge at the well-head. And that as a matter of fact a channeling could not occur, because of the protective cement around the casing as indicated on the charts.
Apparently the charts were not offered in evidence since they do not appear in the record before us, but in their use before the jury Mr. Zwahlen, a petroleum engineer for appellant, testified as follows:
"Q. Mr. Zwahlen, I have some diagrams. Are yon familiar with that diagram?
A. Yes, I am.
Q. Would you explain it, please?
A. Yes, I will. May I move over here, so possibly the Judge can see?
Q. Mr. Zwahlen, was this drawn under your supervision?
A. This was drawn under my supervision, since I had all the records of what went on. This illustrates the well that we actually fracted up there, the Wesson No. 1, and according to our records the well, of course, was completed according to the State regulations. We had our surface casing set at this depth and cemented.
Q. What is that?
A. This blue line is cement. We explain down here. You may not be able to see it, but cement is solid through here, the surface casing. Of course, this is the outside of the hole and then we drilled on down to our projected depth, which this one was 2,326 was the total depth of our well. Then we ran our production casing, which is 5% inch casing, to below our producing sand. Then we — 'Some of you people, I know, being in the oil field know these terms, but I'd like to go on through this. We pumped cement on down around this casing and- it comes out around the outside and the top of the cement is shown here. It calculates out that it should be at 925 feet, from the surface to here, and we are perforated down here in the range of 2,150 feet and below, which gives us more than 1,000 foot of cemented casing which will protect anything up above us.
Q. Here's another chart. Do you recognize this chart, Mr. Zwahlen?
A. Yes, I do. We were trying to draw to scale something that we could bring into the Court Room and show to everyone here exactly, as ice could, the situation toe had out there on the job when we were fraeting and, of course, over here, what we have labeled here, we've taken this information from what we call our electric log. It shows here, starting at the surface down to around 900 feet, we have clays, sand and shales interbedded and this is the upper part. Up in here is where you have, of course, your fresh water. This is our'surface casing that we have in here and it's cemented.
Q. Is this the same blue that was on the other?
A. This is the same blue that was on the other. Of course, there's another blue down here. Like I said before, we calculate the cement should come to about 950 feet, so we have all of the cement above this formation that is producing oil and that we did fract down here, where we-'re getting our oil from." (Emphasis supplied.)
One of the links in the chain of circumstances appellees were attempting to forge in support of their theory, was that even though casing and cement were designed to protect against channeling in the oil well under ordinary pumping conditions, vibrations were negligently set in motion by the appellants in their sand fracting operation, and that the vibrations were of sufficient intensity to loosen the casing and cement in the oil well, thus permitting a channeling to occur under the pressure necessarily applied in the sand fracting of oil wells in general, and that was applied to appellants' well in particular.
As to the vibrations, Mrs. Primm testified:
"We did feel the vibrations. It seemed like they were just going to blow the ground out from under us."
Mrs. Primm testified that the noise and vibrations from appellants ' operation were much worse than from other sand fracting operations previously done near, and even closer to her house, than appellants' operation.
Appellants were using an old airplane engine without a muffler in their fracting operation and they admitted it Piade a lot of noise. Appellants did not deny vibrations in the air during their operation, but attempted to disprove vibrations in the ground by introducing pressure charts or graphs taken at the well-head during- the operations and by then demonstrating the sensitivitv of the machine mechanism to vibrations artificially induced in the court room. No objection was made to this bit of demonstrative evidence, but the jury had a right to recognize that the sensitive mechanism of the machine was not under 3,500 pounds of pressure per square inch when the demonstration was conducted in the court room.
As to directed verdicts, this court is fully committed to the rule restated as recently as June 5, 1967, when in the case of St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co. v. Frances W. Farrell, Adm'x, 242 Ark. 757, 416 S. W. 2d 334, we said:
" A directed verdict for the defendant is proper only when there is no substantial evidence from which the jurors as reasonable men could possibly find the issues for the plaintiff. In such circumstances the trial judge must give to the plaintiff's' evidence its highest probative value, taking into account all reasonable inferences that may sensibly bo deduced from it, and may grant the motion only if the evidence viewed in that light would be so insubstantial as to require him to set aside a verdict for the plaintiff should such a verdict be returned by the jury."
The evidence in the record before us does not measure up to the requirements for a directed verdict.
Here the appellees' water well had been producing an abundance of excellent soft and palatable water from a thirty foot depth for a period of eighteen years prior to April 1964. During April 1964, appellants sand fracted their oil well at a depth of 2,150 feet and in doing so they first introduced acid into the well, in an amount and of a kind not shown in the record, but for the purpose of cleaning out the perforations leading from the casing into the oil bearing sand. Appellants then forced an unknown quantity of oil, blended with sand, through the well out into the oil bearing sand under a pressure of 3,500 pounds per square inch. In carrying out this operation, the appellants created a noise with vibrations transmitted either through the air, through the ground, or through both the air and the ground, but in any event of such intensity to vibrate appellees' house which was a distance of 550 feet from appellants ' operation.
The record reveals that pH 7 in water analysis is the dividing line, or neutral area, between acidity and alkalin and that pH 4.9 is a strong acid for human use or consumption. The record further reveals that soon after appellants had finished their operation, the water in appellees' well became unfit for consumption and use and showed an acidity content of pH 4.9, subsiding to almost neutral, 6.7 by December 1965, and that as the acidity of appellees' well water diminished, the calcium and cholride contents more than doubled. There is am- pie evidence that appellees had good well water before the sand fract operation, and that it has been unfit for use since the sand fract operation.
Appellants' oil well, only 550 feet from appellees' water well, contained an undetermined amount of acid. It was the only known source of acid anywhere near appellees ' well. This acid was forced out into the earth under tremendous pressure along with, or ahead of, an undetermined amount or volume of fracting material. There is evidence of tremendous vibrations in connection with this operation and some evidence that the ground under appellees' house vibrated. So giving to the appellees' evidence its highest probative value, and taking into account all reasonable inferences that may be deduced from it, the jury could have reasonably concluded that the high acid content of the water in appellees' well, which had suddenly gone bad following the sand fract operation, was forced into appellees' well along with other impurities, from the only known and nearest source, appellants' oil well.
If the jury accepted appellants' theory that the impurities in appellees' water well came from the salt water disposal pits, the jury could have reasonably concluded that the vibrations from appellants' fracting operations disturbed the surface of the ground to a depth sufficient to release seepage, from the disposal pits into the pure water strata of appellees' well.
We conclude that the trial court did not err in not directing verdicts for the appellants at the close of appellees'case, (Hawkins v. Missouri Pac., 217 Ark. 42, 228 S. W. 2d 642) and we conclude that there was no error in the trial court's failure to direct verdicts for the appellants on the other points relied on in their brief. (Arkansas State Highway Comm. v. Webster, 236 Ark. 491, 367 S. W. 2d 233; Arkansas Louisiana Gas Co. v. Robert C. Wood, 240 Ark. 948, 403 S. W. 2d 54.)
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
Brown and Fogleman, JJ., dissent.