## Facts

- Higgins and Guaranty held oil and gas leases on adjoining tracts in the same oil field.
- Higgins drilled a producing well and pumped approximately 124 barrels per day.
- Guaranty drilled a well about 400 feet from Higgins’s well; it was nonproductive and abandoned.
- Guaranty left the abandoned well open instead of plugging it.
- Higgins alleged the open well allowed air to enter subsurface areas affected by Higgins’s pump, reducing suction and markedly lowering production.
- Higgins alleged the well could be plugged easily and at trivial cost by replacing a removed plug.
- Higgins alleged the open well provided no benefit to Guaranty and only harmed Higgins’s production.
- Higgins sued for an order compelling Guaranty to plug the well and for damages from reduced production.
- The trial court sustained an exception of no cause of action and dismissed; Higgins appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether a mineral lessee states a cause of action when it alleges a neighboring lessee maintains an abandoned, useless open well that substantially impairs the plaintiff’s producing well and can be remedied at minimal cost.
2. Whether Louisiana ownership and neighborhood obligations limit a lessee’s claimed right to use its property in a manner that causes serious, unnecessary harm to an adjoining operator.

## Decision

- The Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the judgment sustaining the exception of no cause of action.
- The court held the petition alleged a legally cognizable claim for injunctive relief to compel plugging and for damages already sustained.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings.
- The Chief Justice dissented.

## Legal Principles

- Ownership and mineral-use rights are qualified by legal limits and the correlative rights of neighbors; they are not a license to inflict gratuitous harm.
- A party may be required to abate a condition on its land/leasehold when it (1) provides no legitimate benefit to the actor, (2) causes serious harm to a neighbor’s lawful operations, and (3) is readily correctable at slight expense.
- Competitive development that incidentally affects neighboring production may be lawful, but maintaining an abandoned, nonproducing well that creates artificial, needless interference can constitute an abusive use of property.

## Conclusion

The court recognized that Louisiana neighborhood obligations restrict mineral operations that are useless to the operator yet materially and avoidably damage an adjoining operator, and it allowed claims for both an injunction to plug the well and damages for diminished production to proceed.


Higgins Oil & Fuel Co. v. Guaranty Oil Co., 145 La. 233, 82 So. 206 (La. 1919)