Court Opinion

ID: 9562064
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:20:57.201951+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:11.755820
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring in the judgment.
While I join in today’s judgment, I cannot accede to the text of the court’s opinion.
The line of demarcation to be drawn for separation of issues within the district court’s cognizance from those which fall within the Corporation Commission’s [Commission’s] jurisdiction lies along that often-difficult-to-chart boundary location where the statutory limit of the Commission’s regulatory power over the oil-and-gas industry meets with the periphery of the law’s still-preserved freedom to govern one’s actions by contract alone. See Tenneco Oil Co. v. El Paso Natural Gas, Okl., 687 P.2d 1049, 1060 [1984] (Opala, J., dissenting). If the parties’ dispute is over contract rights which they exercised within the permissible sphere, a purely private controversy is presented. Because this litigation clearly does not call for judicial interpretation or modification of a prior forced-pooling order, no facet of the Commission’s regulatory power came to be invoked here, and no agency issue was tendered for adjudication. It is hence apparent that subject-matter jurisdiction of this contractual claim resides in the district court. Cf. Samson Resources Co. v. Corporation Com’n., Okl., 702 P.2d 19, 24, 26-27 [1985] (Opala, J., dissenting).