A farming company (FPL) got into a dispute with an environmental-wastewater company (EPS) that was injecting wastewater into the deep subsurface where it, allegedly, ended up beneath FPL's property. The farming company sued the enviornmental-wastewater company for trespass, that trespass taking place in the deep subsurface water table beneath its land.

If that scenario sounds familiar, it may be because this case is making its second visit to the Texas Supreme Court. In 2011

This case is making its second visit to the Supreme Court. The first time, the court of appeals held that the farming company could not sue for trespass because the State regulator had issued a permit. The Texas Supreme Court reversed, holding that the permit was not a bar to civil liability. FPL FARMING LTD. v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESSING SYSTEMS, L.C., No. 09-1010

On remand, the court of appeals ruled that the farming company should get a new trial. Part of its reasoning was that the jury charge was defective because it required the plaintiff farming company to prove a lack of consent to recover for trespass. In the court of appeals’s holding, that was an affirmative defense on which the defendant should have had the burden to establish the presence of consent.

With this opinion, the Texas Supreme Court disagreed. It surveyed a line of its own cases, going back to the days of the Republic, which described consent as part of the definition of trespass itself. Responding to FPL’s citation to some courts of appeals that used the term “affirmative defense” to describe the question of consent, the Court suggested that may have been discussing just the general concept that a defendant who did prove consent would defeat the claim, no matter whose burden of proof it actually way. As such, those courts may have “perhaps hastily used the term ‘affirmative defense’ to describe this proposition.” (The Court also notes that “[t]here is no pattern jury charge for a trespass to real property cause of action in Texas.” One suspects that might change.)

Having held that a plaintiff in a trespass claim does bear the burden to prove the lack of consent, the Court concluded that the jury charge here was not erroneous. Because this part of the Court’s decision was sufficient for the defendant to prevail, and because the Court was rendering judgment rather than sending the case back for a new trial, the Court saw no need in this case to reach the broader question of whether Texas law imposes a duty on a landowner to avoid causing this kind of “deep subsurface wastewater migration” beneath neighboring land.