LITTLE ROCK-Attorneys for landowners along the Pegasus pipeline say a judge made a mistake when he reversed his own decision and dismissed a class-action lawsuit against Exxon Mobil without notice.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports that the attorneys filed an appeal to the March 2015 ruling in which U.S. District Judge Brian Miller overturned his August 2014 decision to grant class-action status to landowners whose property is crossed by the pipeline.
"What had changed in two weeks?" attorneys for landowners Arnez and Charletha Harper and Rudy and Betty Webb, argued, "The facts had not."
The attorneys filed the document in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis in response to Exxon Mobil's arguments in support of U.S. District Judge Brian Miller's March 2015 ruling. In that ruling, the judge overturned his August 2014 decision to grant class-action status to landowners whose property is crossed by the pipeline that extends from Corsicana, Texas, to Patoca, Ill.
The pipeline cracked open in a Mayflower subdivision in March 2013, sending tens of thousands of gallons of heavy crude oil into the neighborhood, drainage ditches and a Lake Conway cove. The landowners allege the company's policies and actions led to misuse of the pipeline and to property contamination.
The oil giant shut down the entire, roughly 850-mile line after the accident. All but a 211-mile section running from Corsicana to Nederland, Texas, remains idle.
Exxon Mobil spokesman Ashley Smith Alemayehu declined to comment in an email Monday.