Laclede Gas Company v. St. Charles County, Missouri et al
Filing
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OPINION, MEMORANDUM AND ORDER - IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendants' Motions to Dismiss, [Doc.Nos. 88 and 90 ], are DENIED. Signed by District Judge Henry E. Autrey on 01/27/2014. (CLK)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI
EASTERN DIVISION
LACLEDE GAS COMPANY,
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Plaintiff,
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v.
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ST. CHARLES COUNTY, MISSOURI )
and L.F. KRUPP CONSTRUCTION,
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INC.,
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Defendant.
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No. 4:11CV01766 HEA
OPINION, MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
This matter is before the Court on Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss for Lack
of Jurisdiction and for Failure to State a Claim, [Doc. No.’s 88 and 90]. For the
reasons set forth below, the Motion is denied.
Factual Background
As stated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit:
This dispute involves the rights of a local government, St.
Charles County, Missouri (“County”), and the rights of a public
utility, Laclede Gas Company (“Laclede”), in shared easements. The
County takes the position that Laclede must alter or relocate*415 its
gas lines without compensation if the County so demands. Laclede
disagrees and, so far, has been successful in the state courts. Despite
this success, the County, according to Laclede, persists in its efforts
to interfere with Laclede's gas lines. Among other things, Laclede
claims that the County's threatened actions endanger the public
safety.
Laclede Cas Co. V. St. Charles County, Mo, 713 F.3d 413, 414 (8th Cir. 2013).
The Eighth Circuit examined whether this Court did indeed possess subject
matter jurisdiction:
The County also argues that the court lacks jurisdiction over
Laclede's PSA claim because it is really just a “quintessential state
law claim” under Columbia Gas Transmission Corp. v. Drain, 191
F.3d 552, 554–55 (4th Cir.1999). In Drain, the Fourth Circuit
concluded that the PSA did not create jurisdiction over a claim that a
private landowner's building encroached upon a gas company's
easement. Id. Unlike Drain, which involved little more than
determining the boundary of an easement, this matter involves an
ongoing threat by the County to remove and relocate Laclede's gas
lines, thereby threatening physical damage to the pipeline and as well
as threatening the public safety. Such an ongoing and active threat is
squarely within the wheelhouse of the PSA's injunctive relief
provision—a provision that is obviously intended to enforce the
federal prohibition against the knowing and willful infliction of
damage to a regulated pipeline. In sum, an imminent threat of
physical damage to a pipeline with the concomitant endangerment of
the public, such as the one presented here, is sufficient to provide a
federal district court with jurisdiction under PSA sections
60121(a)(1) and 60123(b) for the purposes of injunctive relief. The
fact that the threat may find its genesis in a state law dispute does not
defeat the federal question.
Id., at 418. Thus, by the Appellate Court’s clear articulation of the jurisdictional
requirements of the PSA, this subject matter jurisdiction is present in this case.
The Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Subject Matter Jurisdiction is denied.
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With regard to the pleading requirements of Rule 12(b)(6), Plaintiff has
sufficiently alleged its claim. Again, the Eighth Circuit answered this query in the
affirmative in affirming this Court’s grant of a preliminary injunction:
In addressing this factor, the district court relied on St. Charles
County v. Laclede Gas Co., where the parties previously raised
arguments similar to those in this case. In that case, the Missouri
Supreme Court relied upon United States Supreme Court precedent to
conclude that “when a utility's right to construct and maintain its
utility equipment is premised upon an easement, the utility is not
responsible for the costs of relocating its equipment.” 356 S.W.3d at
140 (citing Panhandle E. Pipe Line Co. v. State Highway Comm'n,
294 U.S. 613, 617–18, 55 S.Ct. 563, 79 L.Ed. 1090 (1935)). With this
principle in mind, and in light of the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling,
the district court determined the probability-of-success factor
convincingly weighed in favor of Laclede. In doing so, the district
court noted that the Missouri Supreme Court opinion only addressed
PHR, and not ER. However, because the operative language in the
PHR and ER easements was remarkably similar, the district court
decided to use the Missouri Supreme Court's rationale as guidance.
The County asserts that the district court failed to recognize the
proper scope of the public's rights in its own roads, and therefore, its
analysis under Dataphase was tainted. In making this assertion, the
County rehashes several of the arguments previously rejected by the
Missouri Supreme Court's opinion. The County persists in making
these arguments even though it acknowledges that this court is bound
by the Missouri Supreme Court's interpretation of Missouri law. See
Missouri v. City of Glasgow, 152 F.3d 802, 805–06 (8th Cir.1998).
Plainly put, the County's odd argument—essentially, that the
Missouri Supreme Court's opinion was either wrong or need not be
followed—has no legal support. This is especially true given the
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County's concession, at oral argument, that Laclede has prevailed in
the state ER Proceeding brought by the County.
2. Public Interest
The district court also determined that the “public interest”
factor weighed in favor of Laclede. In making this determination, the
district court found that Laclede's PHR and ER gas lines served
numerous customers in the St. Charles area, a 200–foot retaining wall
and six to eight feet of fill were directly over Laclede's Pitman Hill
easement, the County had proposed to construct two more retaining
walls on the Pitman Hill easement, and the County was planning to
remove gas lines along PHR and ER without Laclede's assistance.
Moreover, and very importantly, we agree that the removal of gas
lines along PHR and ER without the assistance of Laclede, as
proposed by the County, enhances the risk of a potential explosion or
leak and endangers the public safety. Indeed, at oral argument, the
County conceded that neither the County nor its contractor had any
experience removing pipelines. In sum, these factual findings are not
clearly erroneous.
III. CONCLUSION
To protect the public safety, and for other reasons, the district
court stepped in when the County refused to adhere to the opinion of
the Missouri Supreme Court in litigation it brought against Laclede.
The district court had jurisdiction under the PSA, a federal statute that
specifically authorized the district court to enjoin threats to damage
pipelines. The issuance of a preliminary injunction in those
circumstances was not error. Accordingly, the decision below is
affirmed.
Based upon the foregoing, the Motions to Dismiss are not well taken.
Accordingly,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss, [Doc.
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No’s. 88 and 90], are DENIED.
Dated this 27th day of January, 2014.
_______________________________
HENRY EDWARD AUTREY
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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