Nuisance judgment could encourage more such lawsuits against oil and gas drilling companies

Lawsuits alleging water contamination and illnesses from natural-gas wells have often led nowhere. But an April decision by a Texas jury to award a couple $2.9 million, because the company created a nuisance that interfered with the homeowners' use of their land, could encourage similar lawsuits across the country. (CNN image: Bob Parr's frequent nosebleeds helped him win his case)

"The facet of common law has existed for centuries, originally to address, say, foul odors from a neighbor's pig sty," Ellen Gilmer reports for EnergyWire. "Today, nuisance is much the same, except neighbors now fight over a towering drilling rig, or the flood lights from a fracking operation, or the slew of truck traffic trudging across their rural roads."

University of Cincinnati law professor Jim O'Reilly told Gilmer, "Whether we like fracking or not, we have to say it's a major transformation of what had been a quiet agricultural area into a major industrial area." Gilmer writes, "The extent of that transformation, which certainly varies depending on the site, plays into the nuisance test. Though the law varies state by state depending on precedent set by judges, the test for a claim remains fairly standard: Does an action unreasonably interfere with the enjoyment and use of one's property?"

But proving a nuisance claim is often difficult, Gilmer writes. Attorney Brannon Robertson told her, "You can put the same set of facts in front of two different juries, and one will do one thing and one will do another."

Companies have also found ways to get around nuisance claims, Gilmer writes. One way is to create a good relationship with people living in the vicinity of a well by keeping wells "as far from homes as possible, use sound barriers, hire contractors with safe driving records and erect fences to hide anything that might be deemed an eyesore." Another way is to follow the lead of Pennsylvania gas companies, which offered residents $50,000 to release the company from any legal liability, now or in the future. Environmentalists have criticized that approach, calling it "hush money." (Read more)