A railroad and an oil drilling firm that once resorted to dueling bulldozers in a dispute over surface and mineral rights on the site of a 2,450-acre former Pointe Coupee plantation have apparently reached a settlement.
U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson last week signed off on a joint motion for conditional dismissal of the lawsuits and countersuits Union Pacific and WarHorse Oil & Gas of Jarreau had filed against one another, beginning last summer. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, and requests for comment from attorneys and company representatives for both sides were not returned by deadline.
The settlement comes not long after a Feb. 12 hearing, during which Jackson rejected motions for summary judgement from both sides. The matter was scheduled for a two-day bench trial before the judge last week. Previous efforts to settle the case had failed.
The dispute centered on the site once owned by Holloway Planting Co. Union Pacific bought the land in 1982, and WarHorse acquired a mineral lease for the property in 2013. In August, Union Pacific began construction of a SIT, or Storage in Transit, Yard, on 75 acres of the property. Plans call for 21 yard tracks and two wye, or triangular junction, tracks to store railcars containing chemical products belonging to Union Pacific’s Louisiana customers.
WarHorse had one producing well on the site and plans for two others. The drilling company had alleged UP’s project would force it to use costly directional drilling access its wells. At one point, both sides in court filings accused the other of using bulldozers to damage one another’s construction areas to make their case.
—Penny Font
