Citizens Sue Illinois for Fracking Property Rights

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The state of Illinois faces a proposed fracking property rights class action lawsuit filed by a group of oil and gas rights owners who allege that the state’s denial of fracking permits is unconstitutional. While Illinois did pass a state law in 2013 to allow fracking, the state government has not yet approved regulations for fracking permits.

Plaintiff Amy Pollard and over a dozen other named plaintiffs filed this property rights class action lawsuit on Oct. 15, claiming Illinois has violated these individuals’ rights to eminent domain and right to remedy under Illinois’ constitution, as well as their private property rights as protected by the Fifth Amendment when the state denied them fracking permits.

According to Pollard and the other co-plaintiffs, while they own oil and gas rights, these rights do not have any monetary value until the minerals in question can be extracted from the property. To do so, these oil and rights owners would require permits issued by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

In their fracking property rights class action lawsuit, Pollard and the other plaintiffs claim that “landowners who have leased their oil and gas rights have not received any royalty revenue from the leases because of the lessee’s inability to obtain permit approval for horizontal drilling and fracking.” The plaintiff landowners are seeking monetary damages awards of $50,000 for each Class Member. The fracking class action lawsuit estimates that there may very well be over a thousand oil and gas rights owners that would qualify as Class Members for this litigation.

Over the past year or so, fracking operators have paid over $100 million to lease oil and gas rights from landowners residing in six counties across Illinois. According to the fracking property rights class action lawsuit, these fracking operators allegedly planned to extract the oil in the gas under these plaintiffs’ properties by drilling horizontally into the Illinois Basin.

Because fracking has been done in the Illinois Basin from other states since the 1950s and because horizontal drilling has been found to be equally successful and safe over the past decade, the plaintiff landowners find no reason why the state can legally deny them fracking permits.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs stress that the Illinois counties are in desperate need of jobs and have been counting on the income from fracking. The fracking class action lawsuit seeks to recover damages for the plaintiffs whose property rights have allegedly been taken without just compensation.

The plaintiffs are represented by Rodney V. Taylor, George W. Tinkham, and Morris Lane Harvey of Christopher & Taylor.

The Fracking Property Rights Class Action Lawsuit is Pollard, et al. v Pat Quinn, Governor of the State of Illinois and Marc Miller, Director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, in the Circuit Court for the Second Judicial Circuit of Illinois. The case number was not immediately available.