The Mississippi Court of Appeals issued a ruling this week in an oilfield-related lawsuit from Marion County Circuit Court.
The appeals court upheld a jury’s decision that Blackjack Oil Company Inc. of Natchez did not owe anything to Swampfox Oilfield Services LLC of Columbia, but it reversed a counterclaim that Blackjack had won against Swampfox.
“Neither party shall recover anything from the other,” Judge Jack Wilson wrote in the opinion published Tuesday.
The court wrote the following summary of the facts in the case: “Blackjack Oil Company had a lease on a previously abandoned oil well in Walthall County. Blackjack contracted with Swampfox Oil Services to attempt to drill the well to a depth of 3,400 feet. Swampfox encountered difficulties in the well and eventually lost an expensive drill bit, provided by Blackjack, in the well hole. Swampfox fished for the bit for two days but could not retrieve it, and Blackjack then decided to plug and abandon the hole.”
Those events happened in 2015.
Swampfox sued in Marion County Circuit Court, alleging that Blackjack failed to make payments required in their contract, according to court records. Blackjack denied it owed anything and filed a counterclaim for damages for the loss of the well and the cost of having to drill a new well, court records said.
A jury in 2017 ruled for Blackjack, awarding it damages of $10,971.85 on the counterclaim.
The appeals court said the jury’s decision for Blackjack was supported by the evidence, but it found the contract, which had been a form contract that the parties marked through and wrote additions on, barred Blackjack from getting the counterclaim.
The decision was unanimous, but Judge David McCarty, although concurring with the result, wrote a separate opinion objecting to the uses of clauses in contracts that restrict the ability to sue if things go wrong, saying they’ve “been used to deprive Mississippians of access to the courts.” n
