Opinion ID: 2612210
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the operator's appeal

Text: The operator's appeal is from that part of the decree that requires him to post a $50,000 bond to secure payment of compensation for the use of the existing well bore and for damages to the surface. [11] The Commission had previously refused to deal with landowners' claimed ownership of the well bore and with their demand that its use be proscribed. The issue so tendered to the Commission clearly was outside of that tribunal's authority. The Commission cannot determine title to an interest in land. [12] The district court undertook to adjudicate the landowners' claims to the well bore. It ruled that the ownership of the well bore, upon its abandonment by the prior lessee, came to be vested in the landowners. This appeal does not challenge that part of the trial court's decree. [13] Rather, the question pressed upon us here is whether the district court erred in imposing the bond requirement and in determining that the operator would be liable for compensation if he proceeded to utilize the abandoned well bore. [14] While the operator clearly was entitled to the injunctive relief sought and allowed, the trial court erred insofar as its decree attempted to affect the issue of operator's liability for damages from an anticipated invasion of landowners' asserted interest in the well bore. This was an operator's suit for injunction to prevent the landowners from interfering with his proposed activities on the chosen drilling site. The landowners sought neither a judgment at law imposing liability on the operator nor a declaration of their claim to a compensated use of the well bore. [15] They merely defended against the plea for injunctive relief. The bond required by the trial court was neither needed nor imposable as an incident of permanent injunction granted to the operators. [16] Its intended purpose was to secure the landowners against the operator's potential liability in case the well bore were in fact used. The nature and extent of that liability was not sub judice. It was tendered neither by pleadings nor proof and hence could not be litigated. [17] There had been as yet no invasion of the landowners' asserted rights and no occasion shown for equitable intervention or relief. [18] In short, the bond requirement, which cannot be regarded here as incidental either to some interest adjudged or to one that was tendered for decision in this equitable suit, is entirely without any basis in law. The operator is accordingly relieved of his duty to comply with the bond provision, and insofar as the trial court's decree undertakes to deal with, or affect, the operator's future liability for his anticipated use of the well bore, it is to be treated as surplusage. It lies outside the equitable issues that were actually tendered and litigated below. The decree allowing an injunction against the landowners is affirmed as modified. BARNES, C.J., and IRWIN, LAVENDER, HARGRAVE and WILSON, JJ., concur. SIMMS, V.C.J., concurs in judgment. HODGES and DOOLIN, JJ., concur in Parts I and II and dissent from Part III.