RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Thanks for the Front Row Seat, HH.I was able to get a lawyer friend to watch the oral argument (currently available here for anyone else who wants to view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOkAAMtv6uE). Here are some additional thoughts (not legal or investment advice of course!):
All three judges seemed to slam the idea that the breach of contract (assumed for purposes of the appeal) provided sufficient basis for the preliminary injunction. That seemed pretty clear.
However, the trial court's determination that the city's claim that DME should be required to get an APP (aquifer protection permit), even though the ADEQ (Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, which I think issues APPs) and AOGCC (Arizona Oil & Gas Conversation Commission, which grants the drill permits) don't seem to think so, provided a separate and indpendent basis for the prelminary injunction. The judges didn't actually say too much about that issue. They asked the city to specifically address this, then afterwards simply said "Okay, thank you."
They talked about nuisance because a nuisance claim could potentially provide another basis for the preliminary injunction, but seemed to dismiss this because as you noted it was added to the city's complaint at the last minute and it sounds like the trial court did not make a specific finding regarding that claim. From the judges' comments that there wasn't actually a trial court judgment on the nuisance claim yet, I don't think the city's nuisance claim will support the current prelminiary injunction, but I have some concern that the trial court will later grant another preliminary injunction on the basis of nuisance, in which case we'd probably be looking at another long appellate process.
It's not really clear to me what data DME collected or didn't collect while on city land. I thought the DME lawyer said that DME collected some data but determined it wasn't helpful compared to the data collected on state land. But perhaps I misheard her or she wasn't fully informed on the question. But this doesn't seem like a big deal to the judges - they all seemed to think the city should just go collect its own data (which it apparently still hasn't done) if it is really so important.
Litigation is always messy, and the wheels of justice unfortunately turn slowly and at signficant cost. The good news so far is that the appellate judges for this case seem to have their heads on straight. Hopefully we get a ruling that confirms that.
GoldenArm wrote: I think the Judges were very clear in the pursuit of the trespass claim. The city argued that because they didn't turn over the data then they were in trespass because the contract was breached. The fact they filed the Trespass and Nuisance claim just days before the hearing was a ploy to get that on the record but the Judge wasn't going to let them play games, where the defense would be caught of guard.
All three Judges asked the City what's the issue and all the City can say is that we didn't get the data. My thinking is that DME either didn't do the Siesmic test on City land or that the data they had, limited, was minimal and not worth it. If the second point is true then give it to the City.
What I see here is that the City sees an opportunity to get money from DME because no Siemic data was collected on their land. However the injunction stand until the city can prove the contract was violated. What I see is these Judges looking at only the contract violation part and pretty much could order DME to do the Siesmic analysis but there is a claus that if DME doesn't turn over the data then the city keep the permit money which makes the cities argument moot.