The dispute arose when Close Armstrong LLC and Randall and Jaymie Dickson sought to grant conservation easements to the U.S. Department of Agriculture but discovered that Trunkline Gas Company held broad pipeline easement rights over their Indiana properties dating back to 1959. The 1959 agreements granted Trunkline not only the right to operate its existing 100 Line natural gas pipeline but also future rights to "lay, construct, maintain, operate, alter, repair, remove, change the size of, and replace at any time or from time to time one or more additional lines of pipe," with the additional lines "not to necessarily parallel any existing line."
Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson-Akiwumi wrote for the panel that while Indiana courts have allowed the fixation of exercised floating easements, "no Indiana court has ever fixed unexercised, future rights of use for the placement of a non-parallel pipeline." The court rejected the landowners' arguments that Trunkline's historical use of only a 66-foot corridor around the existing pipeline had fixed the easement through practice, noting that "in every instance where an Indiana court has relied on similar evidence to fix a floating easement based on past use, the right had already been exercised."
The case proceeded through two phases of litigation in the Northern District of Indiana before Judge Damon Leichty. In the first phase, the district court found that the 1959 agreements granted Trunkline an unspecified floating easement over each property. In the second phase, the court concluded that the floating easement rights not yet exercised were not fixed to a location and again granted Trunkline partial summary judgment.
The decision preserves Trunkline's ability to install additional pipelines anywhere on the properties in the future, preventing the landowners from participating in the USDA's Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. The Seventh Circuit also declined to certify the question to the Indiana Supreme Court, finding that existing Indiana precedent provided sufficient guidance and that certification was unnecessary given the court's certainty in its conclusion.