Intercontinental Terminals Co. v. Vopak North America, Inc.

354 S.W.3d 887, 2011 Tex. App. LEXIS 7654, 2011 WL 4398553
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedSeptember 22, 2011
Docket01-11-00323-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by77 cases

This text of 354 S.W.3d 887 (Intercontinental Terminals Co. v. Vopak North America, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Intercontinental Terminals Co. v. Vopak North America, Inc., 354 S.W.3d 887, 2011 Tex. App. LEXIS 7654, 2011 WL 4398553 (Tex. Ct. App. 2011).

Opinion

OPINION

HARVEY BROWN, Justice.

Intercontinental Terminals Company LLC (ITC) appeals from a temporary injunction in favor of Vopak North America, Inc. and Vopak Terminal Deer Park, Inc. (collectively, Vopak), which allows Vopak certain use of ITC’s railroad track during the pendency of this litigation. ITC challenges the trial court’s temporary injunction on the grounds that it impermissibly alters the status quo and is not supported by evidence of two elements essential to temporary injunctive relief: probable, imminent, and irreparable harm and a probable right to recover. We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in determining that its order was necessary to preserve the status quo and that the order is supported by evidence of probable, imminent, and irreparable harm and a probable right to recover. We therefore affirm the trial court’s temporary injunction order.

Background

ITC and Vopak are neighbors and competitors. 1 These two storage and transport businesses each have a location in Deer Park, Texas, alongside the Houston ship channel. The land on which they are located was once a single property owned by Union Equity Cooperative Exchange, Inc. In 1972, Union Equity sold a parcel of its land to Robertson Land Company. At the time of the sale, Union Equity and Robertson Land entered into a “lead trackage agreement.” Under this agreement, Union Equity granted Robertson Land a right to use its railway track, track 805, which traverses Union’s land and connects to the Port Terminal Railway Association’s (PTRA) main rail line. In exchange, Robertson Land agreed to share in track 805’s maintenance costs, proportionate to its track usage. 2

Vopak now owns the land sold to Robertson Land and uses track 805 as Robertson Land’s successor under the lead track-age agreement. ITC owns the land on which track 805 is located and is Union Equity’s successor under the agreement. Railway transportation is an important part of both ITC’s and Vopak’s storage and transport businesses. Track 805 is their only rail access to the PTRA’s main line. Much of this litigation centers on the following language in the agreement: “Any movement of [Vopak’s] cars over [ITC’s] track shall be subject to the control of [ITC] so as not to interfere with [ITC’s] use thereof.”

During the past decade, ITC, Vopak, and a third party, Clear Harbors, have shared use of track 805. The number of railcars inbound or outbound to ITC or Vopak varied widely on a day-to-day basis. For example, over a four day period in 2009, Vopak received zero railcars the first *891 day, fifty-five railcars the next day, ten railcars the third day, and fifty-seven rail-cars the fourth day. Every year for the past three years, Vopak has received seventy railcars or more in a single day and has also received zero railcars on some days. Vopak has received in excess of 100 railcars in a single day in the past. Vopak has invested more than $72 million in rail-related infrastructure.

Historically, ITC and Vopak transported their materials via manifest trains, which are generally made up of railcars holding different types of product from multiple customers. In 2010, Vopak anticipated an increased demand for storage of ethanol and implemented a business plan that would allow it to receive ethanol via unit trains. Unit trains are considerably longer than manifest trains and generally transport only a single product from a single customer. This new delivery method was likely to result in an increase in the number of cars delivered to Vopak over track 805. After learning of Vopak’s intentions, ITC attempted to limit Vopak’s use of track 805 to a maximum of thirty-five railcars per day going into Vopak’s facility and thirty-five railcars per day going out. In May 2010, ITC communicated this limit to the PTRA, which handles rail deliveries to ITC’s and Vopak’s Deer Park locations. In June 2010, ITC informed Vopak of its intended limitation on Vopak’s use of the track. Vopak disputed ITC’s right to impose the proposed limit on Vo-pak’s track use.

The PTRA was reluctant to take a side in the dispute, and in early-October 2010, it filed a petition seeking a declaration of ITC’s and Vopak’s rights relating to track 805. Vopak filed a cross-action and sought to enjoin ITC from restricting or interfering with its use of track 805, both during the pendency of the litigation and permanently. After several evidentiary hearings, 3 the trial court entered a temporary injunction order enjoining ITC from restricting Vopak’s use of the track to less than seventy cars per day into Vopak’s facility and seventy cars per day out of Vopak’s facility. That injunction is the subject of this interlocutory appeal.

Standards for Granting and Reviewing Temporary Injunction

A temporary injunction is an extraordinary remedy, the purpose of which is to preserve the status quo of the litigation’s subject matter pending a trial on the merits. Butnaru v. Ford Motor Co., 84 S.W.3d 198, 204 (Tex.2002). To obtain a temporary injunction, an applicant must show: (1) a cause of action, (2) a probable right to the relief sought, and (3) a probable, imminent, and irreparable injury in the interim. Id.; Mattox v. Jackson, 336 S.W.3d 759, 762 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2011, no pet.). The temporary injunction applicant bears the burden of production — i.e., it must offer some evidence of each of these elements. See In re Tex. Natural Res. Conservation Comm’n, 85 S.W.3d 201, 204 (Tex.2002) (quoting Camp v. Shannon, 162 Tex. 515, 348 S.W.2d 517, 519 (1961); Dallas Anesthesiology Assocs., P.A. v. Tex. Anesthesia Group, P.A., 190 S.W.3d 891, 897 (Tex.App.-Dallas 2006, no pet.).

The decision to grant or deny an injunction rests within the trial court’s *892 sound discretion. Butnaru, 84 S.W.3d at 204. We will reverse the trial court’s ruling only if it has abused that discretion. Id. A trial court abuses its discretion only if it reaches a decision so arbitrary and unreasonable that it amounts to a clear and prejudicial error of law or if it clearly fails to correctly analyze or apply the law. In re Olshan Found. Repair Co., LLC, 328 S.W.3d 883, 888 (Tex.2010). We may not substitute our judgment for the trial judge’s. New Process Steel Corp. v. Steel Corp. of Tex., 638 S.W.2d 522, 524 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 1982, no writ). We view the evidence submitted to the trial court in the light most favorable to the court’s ruling, draw all legitimate inferences from the evidence, and defer to the trial court’s resolution of conflicting evidence. CRC-Evans Pipeline Int’l, Inc. v. Myers, 927 S.W.2d 259

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Bluebook (online)
354 S.W.3d 887, 2011 Tex. App. LEXIS 7654, 2011 WL 4398553, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/intercontinental-terminals-co-v-vopak-north-america-inc-texapp-2011.