El Paso Field Service, Inc. v. Minvielle

867 So. 2d 120, 3 La.App. 3 Cir. 1293, 2004 La. App. LEXIS 471, 2004 WL 385150
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedMarch 3, 2004
Docket2003-1293
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 867 So. 2d 120 (El Paso Field Service, Inc. v. Minvielle) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
El Paso Field Service, Inc. v. Minvielle, 867 So. 2d 120, 3 La.App. 3 Cir. 1293, 2004 La. App. LEXIS 471, 2004 WL 385150 (La. Ct. App. 2004).

Opinion

867 So.2d 120 (2004)

EL PASO FIELD SERVICE, INC.
v.
Stephen MINVIELLE.

No. 2003-1293.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit.

March 3, 2004.

*121 Jeffrey M. Baudier, Attorney at Law, Lafayette, LA, for Plaintiff/Appellee El Paso Field Service, Inc.

*122 John Felton Blackwell, New Iberia, LA, for Defendant/Appellant Stephen Minvielle.

Court composed of BILLIE COLOMBARO WOODARD, OSWALD A. DECUIR, and BILLY HOWARD EZELL, Judges.

WOODARD, Judge.

The Plaintiff, El Paso Field Services, Inc. (El Paso), sought an injunction prohibiting the Defendant, Mr. Stephen Minvielle, from engaging in any crawfishing operations on its right-of-way (ROW) that could damage its pipeline. We affirm the trial court's decision to grant it an injunction.

* * * * *

On January 29, 2001, El Paso became the owner and operator of the Sibon Pipeline traversing Mr. Minvielle's property.

On September 15, 1959, his ancestor in title granted the Sibon Pipe Line Company, El Paso's ancestor in title, "the right to lay" this pipeline across the property. The ROW agreement also gave this company's "successors and assigns" a permanent right to "operate, maintain, inspect, repair, replace, change the size of, and remove" its pipeline.

On February 28, 1985, the parties' predecessors executed an amendment to this ROW agreement to designate with particularity the portion of the property encumbered:

[T]he total width of the right-of-way acquired... is and shall be a width of fifty (50) feet, measured twenty-five (25) feet on either side of the center line of the pipeline as it is physically located in place on the captioned property.

In May of 2000, Mr. Minvielle constructed a crawfish pond on the subject property despite his awareness that a pipeline rightfully traversed it since 1959. Before beginning construction, he met with representatives of Enron, owner of the ROW at the time, to discuss the possible ramifications of building a crawfish pond over the Sibon Pipeline. Enron told him he could construct the pond only if he agreed that he would not change the volume of dirt over its pipeline, which it maintained at a thirty-six (36) inch minimum depth.

In February of 2001, Mr. Minvielle began conducting his crawfishing operation, using a sixteen (16) foot by six (6) foot wide hydraulically driven boat propelled by a steel wheel, commonly referred to as a "crawler," that floats along the contour of the bottom of the pond. The crawler's wheel is approximately thirty-six (36) inches by eight (8) inches wide and has "cleats" protruding from it made out of "cold-roll steel" which provide traction for the crawler.

When he described his crawler for the trial court, Mr. Minvielle explained that: "It crawls along the bottom and ... because it is quite heavy, it will sink through the mud-line, depending on how much it gets slurred up and all; and it will find solid earth to propel the boat along." Due to this mode of operation, the crawler causes significant rutting of the soil because its wheel has to dig deeper each time it passes through the pond's soft muddy bottom in order to propel the crawler forward, which results in the wheel going ever deeper below the surface of the soil as crawfish season progresses. In fact, Mr. Minvielle confirmed that sometimes the entire wheel goes below the soil digging a trench that can be upwards of forty (40) inches deep.

Approximately three months later, in late April, Mr. Minvielle's first crawfish season ended, and the pond was emptied until the following season began in November of 2001.

*123 In January of 2002, his crawler struck the Sibon Pipeline while harvesting crawfish. The next day, he marked the area where he thought he hit the pipeline and called to report this incident to the company that owned the pipeline at the time. The representative who answered reportedly said that they would send someone to inspect the pipeline immediately.

According to Mr. Minvielle, it was "two, three, or four weeks later" before Mr. Daron Johnson, an Operations Specialist for El Paso, went to the property to perform a "routine inspection" of the pipeline. At trial, when Mr. Minvielle was asked whether Mr. Johnson knew that the crawler struck El Paso's pipeline, he responded: "No, he indicated that [El Paso] had just bought the [Sibon Pipeline] in January ... and he had no knowledge of it." He was also asked about the steps Mr. Johnson took on that day to resolve this problem. Mr. Minvielle answered:

I must say that Mr. Johnson reacted really quick. He did not play around with it.

....

He explained to me what was in there, what was going on ... [and] asked me not to do this any more. [He also asked me] [t]o mark the spot where it was [struck] to the best of my ability and [told me] that he was going to contact his superiors above him and find out what they needed to do about this.

Two or three weeks later, "[a] barrage of engineers [and] right-of way people" came out to the property to talk with Mr. Minvielle about this incident. After a few meetings, El Paso agreed not to excavate the portions of the pipeline that he thought he hit until sometime after April of 2002, when the crawfish season had ended, because it realized that any work on the pipeline would interfere with his crawfishing operation. El Paso's agreement was contingent on Mr. Minvielle's promise to stay off their pipeline for the rest of the season.

On August 15, 2002, when it excavated the portions of the pipeline which Mr. Minvielle had previously marked, El Paso found only one spot where he had damaged the pipeline's "epoxy cold tar" protective coating, but it found no damage to the pipe, itself. At a second location, where he mistakenly believed he struck the pipeline, it found no damage to the pipe or its protective coating.

That same day, El Paso removed and replaced the damaged portion of the pipeline's coating. In addition, to lessen the likelihood of any future mishaps, it placed thirty stakes across his pond, marking the exact location where the pipeline crossed.

On September 5, 2002, Mr. Minvielle sent El Paso a letter asking it to move its pipeline to a sufficient depth to ensure that his crawler would not hit it again. In this letter, he asserted:

It is quite clear that the pipe is not submerged to an appropriate depth to allow me to fully use and enjoy the property, and that this problem definitely interferes with the cultivation of the land. El Paso was notified of this problem in January, 2002. However, no attempt to remedy the problem has occurred; it has taken until August 15, 2002 for El Paso to even investigate my complaints. Please be advised that I plan to flood this land to cultivate the fall crawfish crop. I am certainly uncomfortable with El Paso ignoring such a dangerous and potentially life threatening situation, which they have created in improperly maintaining this high-pressure LPG pipeline, and allowing it to remain in a position, which causes it to be struck because it is not properly submerged to an appropriate depth....

*124 I want the pipeline submerged to an appropriate depth that will allow me to cultivate and harvest my crawfish crop without striking the high-pressure LPG pipeline during my farming operations.

(Emphasis added.)

On September 9, 2002, El Paso filed an injunction, asking the trial court to order Mr.

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Bluebook (online)
867 So. 2d 120, 3 La.App. 3 Cir. 1293, 2004 La. App. LEXIS 471, 2004 WL 385150, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/el-paso-field-service-inc-v-minvielle-lactapp-2004.