Champlin Refining Co. v. Brooks

1935 OK 172, 42 P.2d 811, 172 Okla. 124, 1935 Okla. LEXIS 383
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedFebruary 26, 1935
DocketNo. 23926.
StatusPublished

This text of 1935 OK 172 (Champlin Refining Co. v. Brooks) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Champlin Refining Co. v. Brooks, 1935 OK 172, 42 P.2d 811, 172 Okla. 124, 1935 Okla. LEXIS 383 (Okla. 1935).

Opinion

BAYLESS, J.

Lydia M. Brooks, hereinafter called plaintiff, instituted an action in the district court of Garfield county, Okla., against Champlin Refining Company, a corporation, Eason Oil Company, a corporation, and the city of Enid, a municipal corporation, defendants, which defendants will be referred to hereinafter specifically by name. The purpose of the action was to recover damages. Judgment was rendered in favor of the plaintiff, upon the verdict of the and against the plaintiff. The trial court the jury was in favor of the city of Enid and against the plaintiff. The trial court sustained a demurrer to the plaintiff’s evidence and motion for directed verdict filed by Eason, and rendered judgment in favor of Eason and against the plaintiff. Champ-lin brings this appeal. It is necessary to mention the other parties defendant in discussing the pleadings and evidence, although they will not be affected by this opinion.

Plaintiff’s petition described her property, gave its history with reference to the acts of pollution, and described the location of the properties of the parties to this action with reference to each other. The petition gave a detailed description of Boggy creek and recited its use by, and value to the plaintiff. It contained allegations that the city of Enid maintained a sewage disposal plant, which emptied into the creek above the plaintiff’s home, and that because of its inadequate size and the negligent and inefficient operation thereof the sewage of the city passed through said plant and emptied into the creek without having been properly treated, and as a result thereof the waters of the creek were polluted. It contained allegations that Champlin and Eason jointly constructed, owned, and operated a pipe line from their respective refineries to said creek, by the use ■ of which they emptied into the creek, above the home of the plaintiff, waters impregnated with chemicals and waste matters from said refineries, and thereby polluted the said creek. It is further alleged that these pollutive substances discharged into said creek by said defendants resulted in changing the creek from a running stream of clear, usable water to a stream of filthy, poisonous, and unusable water which gave off noxious odors.

It further alleged the following elements of damages resulting to the plaintiff therefrom : The loss of the use of the water of the creek; the necessity of sinking wells on plaintiff’s farm in order to obtain other water and, in time, the impregnation of the waters of these wells with these pollu-tive substances to the extent of their destruction for use; the necessity of plaintiff going to the trouble and expense of hauling water from the city of Enid to her farm; and the loss of comfort and health resulting from the odor arising from the creek.

Champlin’s answer sets up a number of defenses, legal and factual, but in view of the fact that all of its assignments of error are directed toward errors appertaining to evidence, or errors of law based upon the evidence, we will not set out this answer herein. This answer took positive issue with the allegations of the plaintiff’s petition wherever they sought to charge Champlin with any responsibility for the pollution complained of.

*126 The plaintiff testified as to the physical facts and surroundings, the early condition of the creek and the changes which took place in the waters thereof, the loss of the us© of water, the sinking of the wells and the changes in the condition of the waters of the wells by which they were rendered unusable, the necessity for hauling water from elsewhere to the farm for use, and the discomforts caused by the odors arising from the creek. She was corroborated in the parts of her testimony relative to the change in the condition of the waters in the creek, the change in the condition of the waters of the well, and the odors arising from the creek, and the attending discomforts by at least three witnesses. The plaintiff, on cross-examination, admitted that raw sewage from her home was discharged into the creek abreast of her home, but she insisted that there was a minimum and negligible quantity of this raw sewage by reason of the fact she and her husband were the only residents of the home and that they restrained their use of the toilet facilities as much as possible. She and other witnesses testified that the prevailing offensive odors were attributable to the refinery water and waste substances in the creek rather than to human waste. Plaintiff’s expert witness, a chemist, testified concerning the polluted condition of the waters of the creek, attributed this pollution to the acts of the defendants, and stated that the amount of raw sewage discharged into the creek by the plaintiff’s family would be small and would have only “a very small increase” in the pollution of the creek, and that it would not have any effect upon the waters of the creek above plaintiff’s home where the alleged pollutive sub tañeos of the defendants were empt ed into the creek.

The city of Enid introduced as witnesses several of its employees at the sewage disposal plant, some of the responsible city officials, and nonresident sanitary engineers to refute plaintiff’s charges concerning its responsibility for the pollution of the waters of said creek through its sewage disposal plant.

Ohamplin and Eason each introduced expert witnesses as to the condition of the waters of the creek and the well water and to establish the pollution of the water would not result from their acts, if indeed it was polluted. Nine expert witnesses, consisting of sanitary engineers, water purification experts, veterinary doctor, chemist, biologist, and bacteriologist, testified on behalf of the defendants. These witnesses took numerous samples of the waters of said creek at various places and at various times and made numerous tests. The bulk of their testimony was favorable to the defendants, although here and there, in the efforts of an expert witness to clear his principal of blame, would -creep into the record corroboration of the plaintiff’s expert witness and her claims, or would appear evidence unfavorable to some other defendant but favorable to the plaintiff. In the mass of this evidence there was sufficient reasonable evidence to support the plaintiff’s cause of action. The evidence of the plaintiff generally is in conflict with the purported tendency of the defendants’ evidence, and at times the evidence of the various defendants conflicted and, as said, sometimes aided the plaintiff. It is also proper to say that the jury was permitted to inspect the premises at the close of the testimony. The trial court did not see fit to overturn the verdict of the jury, and we will not do so in view of the conflict in the evidence and what we have heretofore said of the sufficiency of reasonable evidence to support the jury’s verdict.

Champlin’s first assignment of error reads :

“The verdict of the jury is contrary to law, is contrary to the instructions as given in said cause by the court, and is not sustained by sufficient evidence.”

What we have just said disposes of that part of this assignment concerning the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict.

Concerning the argument that the verdict is contrary to the instructions, we have this to say: Instruction No. 6 advised the jury, in substance, that if the waters of the creek were polluted by the plaintiff she could not recover unless she separated the amount of her own pollution from the other pollution.

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Related

Schaff v. Richardson
1926 OK 528 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1926)
Walters v. Prairie Oil & Gas Co.
1922 OK 52 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1922)
Brooks v. Champlin Refining Co.
1932 OK 658 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1932)
Hall v. Corcoran
107 Mass. 251 (Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 1871)

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Bluebook (online)
1935 OK 172, 42 P.2d 811, 172 Okla. 124, 1935 Okla. LEXIS 383, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/champlin-refining-co-v-brooks-okla-1935.