In this eminent domain case, Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company sought an 80-foot-wide right-of-way easement across the defendants' land for a high-pressure gas pipeline and disputed the compensation owed after a jury awarded the landowners $9,000. The Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed the judgment, holding that the landowners' expert testimony properly established the property's best use as residential subdivision and calculated diminution in fair market value by comparing before-and-after values. The court ruled admissible the experts' reliance on local market perceptions of pipeline risks, as this evidence showed prevailing conditions rather than proving the truth of hearsay reports. Challenges to the valuation method and other issues were either unsupported by the record or not properly preserved for appeal.
The case involved Louis George Lowery's application for a retail liquor store license in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which the Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Control Board denied based on a statute prohibiting such licenses on any city block where a church is located, interpreting "block" as a large area bounded by four streets encompassing about 400 acres. The district court reversed the Board's decision, finding it arbitrary, and the Supreme Court of Oklahoma affirmed, holding that "block" should be interpreted as the segment of one side of a street between two cross streets, so that an intersecting street between the proposed location and the church divided them into different blocks. The court reasoned that the statute's other provisions use linear distances like 300 feet, suggesting "block" was meant as a measure of distance rather than a large enclosed area, and rejected the Attorney General's opinion defining it otherwise.
This case involved lessors seeking to cancel three oil and gas leases after lessees failed to pay shut-in royalties during a period from 1972 to 1975 when a producing well was shut in due to low pressure and the need to secure a new sales contract. The leases' primary terms had expired, and their habendum clauses extended them only so long as gas was produced, with separate clauses allowing $1 per acre annual shut-in payments to maintain the leases. The trial court ruled for the lessees, but the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the leases terminated for lack of actual or constructive production. The Oklahoma Supreme Court vacated the Court of Appeals opinion and affirmed the trial court, reasoning that the shut-in clauses were not special limitations causing automatic termination, that marketing was not required under the leases' "produced" language, and that diligent efforts by lessees to find a market sufficed to keep the leases in force.
In Puckett v. Cook, the petitioner sought a writ of prohibition to prevent a trial judge from consolidating his personal injury lawsuit, arising from a bus accident, with a similar suit filed by his wife against the same defendant. The Oklahoma Supreme Court assumed original jurisdiction and upheld the consolidation order. The court held that 12 O.S. 1971 § 559, which requires unanimous party consent before consolidating cases for trial by one jury, was an unconstitutional legislative encroachment on the judiciary's inherent power to control its docket and procedures, in violation of the separation of powers under Article IV § 1 of the Oklahoma Constitution. Instead, the court applied 12 O.S. 1971 § 79, which permits consolidation in the exercise of sound judicial discretion, and found no abuse of that discretion here given the shared counsel, witnesses, and facts between the cases.
This case involved a stepfather's petition to adopt his wife's children from a prior marriage without the consent of their natural father, based on the claim that the father had willfully failed to provide support for the preceding twelve months under Oklahoma law. The trial court ruled that the children were eligible for adoption without the father's consent, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court reviewed that interlocutory order via certiorari. The Court held that mere inquiries about support do not constitute offers of support, and that the trial court's finding of willful non-support was not against the clear weight of the evidence, even though the mother had contributed to communication barriers. It therefore affirmed the order allowing the adoption to proceed without consent and clarified that such orders are now final and appealable directly rather than by certiorari. The Court overruled prior precedent to the extent it was inconsistent with this procedural holding.
This case concerned a mother's appeal from an order terminating her parental rights to two young children who had previously been adjudicated dependent and neglected in juvenile proceedings. The Court of Appeals had reversed the termination on jurisdictional grounds, holding that the unverified motion used to initiate termination was improper because it was not a verified juvenile petition under the relevant statutes. The Oklahoma Supreme Court reversed that decision and affirmed the termination order, reasoning that the termination statutes do not require a verified petition when termination proceedings are commenced by subsequent pleading after the children have already been adjudicated within the juvenile court's purview, that the mother received adequate notice and opportunity to be heard consistent with due process, and that she showed no prejudice from the lack of verification. The Court further noted that statutory protections for the initial adjudication do not automatically extend to later termination motions in the same action.