Ray v. Ashland Oil, Inc.

389 S.W.3d 140, 2012 WL 6632488, 2012 Ky. App. LEXIS 291
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedDecember 21, 2012
DocketNos. 2008-CA-000840-MR, 2008-CA-000861-MR, 2008-CA-001011-MR, 2008-CA-001086-MR
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 389 S.W.3d 140 (Ray v. Ashland Oil, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ray v. Ashland Oil, Inc., 389 S.W.3d 140, 2012 WL 6632488, 2012 Ky. App. LEXIS 291 (Ky. Ct. App. 2012).

Opinion

OPINION

LAMBERT, Judge:

These appeals by numerous property owners (“the plaintiffs” or “the appellants”) and a protective cross-appeal from Ashland Oil, Inc., and Ashland Exploration Holdings, Inc. (“Ashland Oil”), arise from several toxic tort cases filed as a result of Ashland Oil’s drilling operations in the Martha Oil Field. The appellants contend that the circuit court erred in dismissing their claims. Finding no error in the circuit court’s rulings, we affirm.

The appellants were among several plaintiffs who filed suit in 1997 and 1998 against Ashland Oil in Johnson and Lawrence Circuit Courts. In an opinion resulting from an earlier appeal by a representative group of other plaintiffs in one of the Johnson Circuit Court actions (“the Cantrell appeal”), the Supreme Court of Kentucky set forth the undisputed factual background:

The Plaintiffs own real property in Johnson County, Kentucky, in an area known as Martha Oil Field. After Ash-land acquired this field in the mid-1920s, it entered into leases with the property owners, including the Plaintiffs or their predecessors in title, and, pursuant to these leases, began engaging in oil production. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ashland Oil began injecting pressurized water into the oil-bearing stratum layer of Martha Oil Field in order to increase oil production. This method of oil production (also called water-flooding), however, causes other materials located below ground to be carried to the surface, one being naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM). When NORM is concentrated on the earth’s surface due to human activities, it is called technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material (TE-NORM). Because all forms of NORM are colorless, odorless, and tasteless, it cannot be detected by humans.

Cantrell v. Ashland Oil, Inc., 2010 WL 1006391 at *1 (2006-SC-000763-DG) (Ky. [143]*143Mar. 18, 2010). The Court then described the filing of the lawsuit against Ashland Oil and the procedural background leading to the Cantrell appeal:

In 1997, the Plaintiffs filed suit against Ashland, claiming that Ashland’s water-flooding method of oil production created NORM contamination on the surface of their property, non-NORM contamination on the surface of their property, and contamination in their groundwater. In their complaint, they alleged that this contamination permanently diminished the value of their property. The Plaintiffs did not claim that any person, animal, or vegetation had been harmed by the contamination, but rather, only claimed that Ashland’s conduct and the resulting contamination constituted a negligent trespass and a continuing nuisance on their property. Prior to trial, Ashland moved to dismiss the groundwater contamination and non-NORM surface contamination claims. The trial court granted this motion, agreeing that these claims were barred by the statute of limitations. In July 2003, a jury trial was held to determine the remaining claims regarding NORM contamination on the ground surface of the Plaintiffs’ properties.
After considering all the proof, the jury concluded that Ashland had been negligent in its method of oil production and that its conduct caused the ground surface of the Plaintiffs’ property to be contaminated ' with above-background levels of NORM. Nonetheless, the jury found that based on the evidence presented, there was no reason for the Plaintiffs to fear the above-background levels of NORM on their property. Because the jury determined that the Plaintiffs’ suffered no injury from the NORM contamination and were not entitled to damages, the trial court entered a judgment for Ashland.

Id. at *2. The Supreme Court affirmed this Court’s opinion, which upheld the jury’s verdict as well as the ruling that the ground water and non-radioactive contamination claims were properly dismissed as untimely. Specifically, the Supreme Court upheld the rulings that the trial court properly excluded certain testimony from the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, including Dr. Steve Waligora, Bob Grace, Michael Jarrett, and Clay Kimbrell (whose testimony was stricken), as well as rejecting the linear, no-threshold model for analyzing the health risks of harmful radiation because that method measures the risk of future harm rather than the present circumstances of the property.1

After the Court of Appeals rendered its decision in the Cantrell appeal in 2006, but before the Supreme Court rendered its decision on discretionary review in 2010, the matter proceeded below with the remaining plaintiffs on their claims of property damage due to the presence of NORM in the owners’ respective soil or pipe. Several plaintiffs were dismissed as they did not own the property in 1987, when Ashland ended oil production in the Martha Oil Field, or failed to appear for depositions, or because they were only claiming “reputation” damages, which have been rejected by the Supreme Court in binding precedent. In March 2008, the circuit court granted Ashland’s motion to exclude the testimony of the plaintiffs’ real estate appraisers because they used the same methodology deemed inadmissible by the Supreme Court of Kentucky in Wilhite v. Rockwell Int’l Corp., 83 S.W.3d 516 (Ky.[144]*1442002). In addition, the circuit court held that its prior rulings and the ruling of the Court of Appeals in the Cantrell appeal were considered the law of the case and granted summary judgment in favor of Ashland Oil based upon this holding. It also noted that the Daubert hearing, scheduled for March 2008 to allow the plaintiffs to develop testimony from their expert witness and to show certain data was reliable, was canceled at the request of the plaintiffs. By orders entered in April and May 2008, the court dismissed the remaining claims based upon the ruling in the Cantrell appeal. These appeals, and a cross-appeal from Ashland Oil, followed.

In their combined brief, the appellants present several arguments related to the circuit court’s entry of summary judgment, the effect of the Cantrell appeal, the dismissal of claims based upon the prior trespass doctrine, the dismissal of nuisance claims and water claims, its rulings regarding the expert witnesses, and regarding punitive damages. Ashland Oil has filed a protective cross-appeal from a ruling in one of the Johnson Circuit Court cases permitting several plaintiffs to intervene nine years after the case was filed.

Before we may reach the merits of the appeal, we must address Ashland Oil’s motion to strike the appellants’ brief and dismiss the appeals, which was passed by a motion panel to this merits panel by order entered May 14, 2012. In support of its motion, Ashland Oil cites to several deficiencies in the appellants’ brief in violation of Kentucky Rules of Civil Procedure (CR) 76.12.2 These deficiencies include an insufficient statement of points and authorities, the inclusion of documents in the appendix that were not included in the record or were not found in the places referenced in the record, and incorrect citations to the record. Ashland Oil provides several examples of instances where a document or order is not located in the place indicated by the appellants, or where the appellants misrepresent what is in a particular order.3

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
389 S.W.3d 140, 2012 WL 6632488, 2012 Ky. App. LEXIS 291, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ray-v-ashland-oil-inc-kyctapp-2012.