Deep Rock Oil Corp. v. Micco

1953 OK 237, 262 P.2d 451, 3 Oil & Gas Rep. 187, 1953 Okla. LEXIS 566
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedSeptember 15, 1953
Docket35462
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 1953 OK 237 (Deep Rock Oil Corp. v. Micco) 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
Deep Rock Oil Corp. v. Micco, 1953 OK 237, 262 P.2d 451, 3 Oil & Gas Rep. 187, 1953 Okla. LEXIS 566 (Okla. 1953).

Opinion

WILLIAMS, Justice.

Parties are referred to as in the trial court.

Plaintiff, Lucy Micco, now Wise, sued defendant, Deep Rock Oil Corporation, for damages to her land incident to the operation of an oil and gas mining lease owned by defendant, adjacent to plaintiff’s land. Defendant’s answer included the affirmative defense of estoppel by judgment. Plaintiff recovered judgment in the trial court, and defendant has duly appealed.

Brief of defendant presents alleged errors of the trial court under four propositions: error in failing to hold that plaintiff was es-topped by a prior judgment in federal court; error in failing to instruct the jury to return a verdict for defendant; error in the giving of two instructions; and error in admitting incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial testimony. They will be considered in that order.

The prior judgment was rendered in a suit filed in 1942 in the Superior Court of Seminole County, and thereafter removed to the United States District Court. Most of the records in that suit are before us as exhibits in. the case at bar; an examination of them discloses that the allegations, pleadings, etc., are substantially the same as in the instant case, except as to the time when *453 the acts of negligence complained of occurred. The pollution complained of in the instant case occurred since the rendition of the federal court judgment. Defendant argues that the prior judgment was for original and permanent damages to the entire tract of land described in this case, and that the plaintiff therefore has already been paid for the damages for which the instant suit is brought.

The findings of fact of the federal court, omitting formal parts, include the following:

“The Court finds that Lucy Micco, now Wise, the plaintiff, is a full-blood Seminole Indian, Roll No. 591, and that she was allotted and is now the owner of the following described land, to-wit:

Lots 3 and 4 and the SE of the SW and the W-½ of the NE o.f the SW of Section 30, Township 8 North, Range 8 East, Seminole County, Oklahoma ;

that said land is tax exempt, restricted and not subject to alienation. * * *

“That for approximately ten years the defendants have permitted salt water to escape from their said leases and to flow over and across Lot 3 and the West Half of the Northeast Quarter of the Southwest Quarter of the lands of the plaintiff above described; that approximately six acres of said land has been totally and permanently ruined and destroyed, and all the vegetation thereon has been killed; that prior to the release of the salt water on said land, there were 40 or 50 pecan trees which produced pecans, all of which trees have been killed by salt water pollution.

“That the land of the plaintiff above described has been damaged and depreciated in value in the amount of Five Hundred ($500.00) Dollars by reason of the acts of the defendants and that said damage is permanent.”

The conclusions of law included:

“That the defendants are liable to the plaintiff for the damages aforesaid, for past, present and future damages, by reason of said acts of pollution heretofore committed.

“That plaintiff is entitled to judgment, against the defendants for said damages and the costs of this action, and judgment should be entered accordingly.” »

• It is to be noted that the only damage specifically found to have occurred was the damage to the six acres and the pecan trees. We therefore conclude that the federal court intended to award damages for those items only, and that the award did not go to the entire tract of land involved.

At the beginning of the trial of this case in the court below, plaintiff dismissed her action as to the six acres of land covered by the prior judgment.

The elements essential to the invoking of the doctrine of estoppel by former recovery, or res judicata, are listed as follows in 50 C.J.S., Judgments, § 598: identity in the thing sued for, identity in the cause of action, identity of persons or parties to the ac.tion, and identity of quality in the persons for or against whom the claim is made. These same essentials are listed in In re Widener’s Estate, 112 Okl. 54, 240 P. 608.

Since the acts of negligence complained of in the case at bar were not the same acts complained of in the federal court case, the causes of action were not the same, and the defense of estoppel'by judgment, or former recovery, is not applicable.

Defendant’s next contention (error in failing to instruct the jury to return a verdict for defendant) goes to the sufficiency of the evidence. Six witnesses testified for plaintiff and seven testified for defendant; each side introduced various exhibits as documentary evidence. Some of the witnesses testified from maps, and others used rather informal terminology in designating various barren spots of land'; for those reasons, we will not set out the evidence here. We have examined it thoroughly and find that there was competent evidence reasonably tending to show that the pollution had occurred for the past three years; that the land had been damaged thereby; that such pollution came from wells operated by defendant; and that different portions of the land had decreased in value in various amounts which *454 : totaled considerably more than the amount ■ of the jury’s verdict. :Under those circumstances, the following rule of law applies:

“In a law action tried to a jury, this court ■ on, appeal,- .will • not -reverse the judgment because of insufficiency of the evidence where there is competent evidence reasonably tending to support the judgment.” Chambers v. Cunningham, 153 Okl. 129, 5 P.2d 378, 78 A.L.R. 905.

Defendant’s third contention was that the court erred in giving two instruc-tiqns to the jury which had the effect of informing''the jury that the measure of damages was the difference in the fair market valué 'of the- land before and after the pollution complained of, and that plaintiff could not recover unless the jury found that more than the six acres covered in the federal court judgment had been damaged. Defendant argues that the true measure of damages should have been based on'the-fair market valúe of the land immediately before the pollution complained- of, and that the instruction as given allowed the jury to award damages which had previously been, recovered in the federal court judgment.- While the measure of damages stated by defendant may be technically correct, we cannot agree that the jury .was misled by the instructions. In these and other instructions, the court fully and adequately informed the jury of the federal court judgment, its amount, and what it covered. The jury was further instructed that plaintiff could not recover unless she provpd damages other than those to the six acres of land for which she had recovered in the federal court judgment (as to which her action 'in this case had previously been dismissed as herein-above noted).

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Bluebook (online)
1953 OK 237, 262 P.2d 451, 3 Oil & Gas Rep. 187, 1953 Okla. LEXIS 566, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/deep-rock-oil-corp-v-micco-okla-1953.