Petro-Hunt LLC v. USA ( 2007 )

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
______________________ FILED
March 6, 2007
No. 06-30095
______________________ Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
PETRO-HUNT, L.L.C.; HUNT PETROLEUM CORPORATION;
and KINGFISHER RESOURCES, INC.,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
versus
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
ASPECT RESOURCES, L.L.C.; BAYOU PETROLEUM CO.;
FIRST TEXAS HYDROCARBONS, INC.; OSCAR C.
FORLAND; GULF COAST OIL & GAS CO.; JUSTISS OIL
CO. INC.; MB EXPLORATION, L.L.C; NORTHSTAR
ENERGY, L.L.C.;PALMER PETROLEUM, INC.; HOWELL R.
SPEAR; JOHN P. STRANG; OCEAN ENERGY RESOURCES
INC., formerly known as UMC Petroleum Corp.;
WHELESS T.D.L. EXPLORATION CO., L.L.C.; DEVON
S.F.S. OPERATING INC., formerly known as Santa
Fe Snyder Corp.; J. BRADLEY JEFFREYS; ENERGY
ARROW EXPLORATION L.L.C.,
Defendants-Appellees.
________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Louisiana
________________________________________________
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Before SMITH, BARKSDALE, and DENNIS, Circuit
Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
Plaintiffs Petro-Hunt, L.L.C.; Hunt Petroleum
Corp.; and Kingfisher Resources, Inc.
(collectively, “Petro-Hunt”) brought this suit in
order to quiet title to 95 Louisiana mineral
servitudes claimed by the United States. The
servitudes are related to 180,000 acres of surface
land acquired by the United States in the late
1930s for incorporation into the Kisatchie
National Forest. The case now comes before us on
its second appeal. See Petro-Hunt, L.L.C. v.
United States, 365 F.3d 385 (5th Cir. 2004). Our
prior opinion lays out the extensive factual and
procedural history behind the case. On this
appeal, Petro-Hunt argues that the district court
*
Pursuant to 5th Cir. R. 47.5, the court has determined
that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent
except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5th Cir. R.
47.5.4.
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erred on remand by denying a motion for trial;
failing that, Petro-Hunt argues that the court’s
prior mandate is clearly erroneous and should be
withdrawn. For the reasons below, we AFFIRM.
The central issue behind the suit is whether
Louisiana Act 315, which passed subsequent to the
acquisition at issue in this case, operates
retroactively to render the mineral servitudes
imprescriptible, such that they may never revert
to the United States through non-use. The lands to
which these servitudes relate were acquired by the
United States at the same time as the 800 acres of
land and the single mineral servitude at issue in
our earlier decision in United States v. Nebo Oil,
190 F.2d 1003 (5th Cir. 1951). For present
purposes, it is enough to note that the earlier
Petro-Hunt appeal determined that the Nebo Oil
decision did not quiet title to anything beyond
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the 800 acres of land and the single mineral
servitude at issue in that case and that therefore
Nebo Oil did not, through either res judicata or
collateral estoppel, bar the present suit. See
Petro-Hunt, 365 F.3d at 396-97.
Having reached that determination, the panel
then looked to the Supreme Court’s decision in
United States v. Little Lake Misere Land Co., 412
U.S. 580 (1973), and this court’s subsequent
decision in Central Pines Land Co. v. United
States, 274 F.3d 881 (5th Cir. 2001). Following
that precedent, the first Petro-Hunt panel
determined that federal law governed the
choice-of-law decision presented by the facts of
this case and that Act 315 could not be used as
the federal rule of decision because it is hostile
to the federal interest at stake. Petro-Hunt, 365
F.3d at 399. Accordingly, the panel found that
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"the 95 servitudes that were not at issue in Nebo
Oil are subject to the contractual provisions
permitting prescription after ten years’ nonuse”
and remanded the case “so that the district court
can determine which servitudes have in fact
prescribed." Id.
On remand, Petro-Hunt filed a motion for trial
on the question of whether Act 315 was "hostile to
the government" and therefore could not be applied
to the facts of this case - in other words,
whether the 95 servitudes in this case are subject
to the rule of prescription. The district court
denied the motion for trial, citing the mandate in
the first appeal for the proposition that the
"only issue to be determined is which of the ‘95
servitudes that were not at issue in Nebo Oil’
have in fact prescribed for nonuse." The parties
then stipulated that five of the servitudes -
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constituting approximately 109,844.5 acres - still
exist through use and that the remainder had
prescribed. The district court entered final
judgment based on this stipulation, granting
Petro-Hunt's earlier alternative motion for
summary judgment. The judgment declared the five
extant servitudes to be in "full force and effect"
and declared any leases on lands burdened by those
servitudes to be "null and void." On appeal,
Petro-Hunt argues that the district court
overstepped its bounds by denying the motion for
trial; failing that, Petro-Hunt argues that the
court’s prior mandate is clearly erroneous and
should be withdrawn. We find no merit in either
assertion.
Petro-Hunt’s first argument is that the prior
panel’s statement regarding the applicability of
Little Lake Misere and Central Pines to the
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present case constituted dicta, since only the
questions of res judicata and collateral estoppel
were raised before either the district court or
the circuit panel during the first appeal. This
court, however, has decided issues "on which the
lower court has had no occasion to rule," in
situations when "the issue before [the court] is
a purely legal one." Cont’l Sav. Ass'n v. U.S.
Fid. & Guar. Co., 752 F.2d 1239, 1244 n.4 (5th
Cir. 1985). Such rulings are "most efficient to
dispose of [an] issue promptly, thus truncating
the subsequent development of [a] case." Id. Where
deciding the issue "require[s] no further
factfinding by the district court and . . . ha[s]
been briefed by the parties in trial briefs
included in the record," such action by the court
"promotes the finality of litigation, consistent
with the goal that "the federal system aims at a
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single judgment and a single appeal." Harris v.
Sentry Title Co., 806 F.2d 1278, 1280 n.1 (5th
Cir. 1987) (per curiam) (citing 1B JAMES WM. MOORE ET
AL., MOORE'S FEDERAL PRACTICE ¶ 0.404[10] (1984)).
[T]his Court often addresses issues for
the guidance of the parties and the
district court on remand. It cannot be
said that such considered statements
should be dismissed as dictum simply
because the Court was not absolutely
required to raise and address such an
issue. Such statements constitute the
"professed deliberate determinations of
the [court]" and, when done in this
fashion, may not be summarily dismissed as
dictum. See BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 409 (5th
ed. 1979).
Harris, 806 F.2d at 1280 n.1.
We find that the earlier panel offered just
such a deliberate, considered statement in ruling
on the choice-of-law issue. The district court
could not, therefore, have properly disregarded
the panel’s explicit directions regarding the
scope of the remand and acted properly in limiting
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its review in accordance with those instructions.
See Briggs v. Penn. R.R. Co., 334 U.S. 304 (1948);
Harris, 806 F.2d at 1280 n.1.
With regard to Petro-Hunt’s second argument -
that the prior mandate of this court is clearly
erroneous and should be withdrawn - we begin by
noting the well-established rule that one panel
within this circuit may not overrule the opinion
of another. Ryals v. Estelle, 661 F.2d 904 (5th
Cir. 1981); United States v. Henry, 727 F.2d 1373
(5th Cir. 1984). Furthermore, the law-of-the-case
doctrine forbids us from re-examining issues of
law or fact decided in a prior appeal. See United
States v. Becerra, 155 F.3d 740, 752 (5th Cir.
1998). There are three exceptions to this
doctrine: we may re-examine an earlier decision
only when (1) substantially different evidence is
presented; (2) there is a change in controlling
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legal authority; or (3) “the decision was clearly
erroneous and would work a manifest injustice.”
Id.; see also White v. Murtha, 377 F.2d 428 (5th
Cir. 1967). “Mere doubts or disagreement about the
wisdom of a prior disagreement . . . will not
suffice.” Hopwood v. State of Texas, 236 F.3d 256,
272 (5th Cir. 2000). Petro-Hunt relies on the
third of these narrow exceptions, but in support
only reasserts the arguments raised before this
court during the first appeal. We are not
persuaded that the prior panel decision results in
such manifest injustice as to warrant the
exception, and we therefore decline to apply the
exception and revisit the earlier decision.
The district court properly limited the scope
of its remand in accordance with the earlier panel
instructions, and Petro-Hunt has not shown that
the earlier decision on appeal is so clearly
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erroneous as to work a manifest injustice. We
therefore AFFIRM the district court’s ruling.
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