Staff file photo This is the AWMS Solutions injection well facility on state Route 169 in Weathersfield just north of Niles. Two small earthquakes in 2014 caused the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to suspend operations there. The injection wells never have reopened.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday the Warren-based 11th District Court of Appeals failed to follow the Supreme Court’s 2020 instructions on how to consider whether to order the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas to compensate the owners of an injection well in Weathersfield for shutting the injection well down in 2014.

In the 2020 decision, the high court found American AWMS Solutions LLC had a property interest in the lease it held on the property where the injection well is located on state Route 169 in Weathersfield, just north of Niles.

The appeals court did not have to decide whether American AWMS had a property interest in the land where the injection well is located because the Supreme Court had already decided the company did, the Supreme Court opinion states. The duty of the appeals court was to weigh evidence to consider how much money, if any, the state owed American AWMS, according to a summary of the ruling written by Dan Trevas, of the Ohio Supreme Court’s public information office.

Instead, the appeals court ruled, following a nine-day trial in 2021, the company did not possess a “property interest” in the lease that would allow it to be compensated by ODNR under the “Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Court filings indicate the company has argued the clause “provides that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.” American AWMS had asked the appeals court in 2016 to order ODNR to compensate American AWMS. Wednesday’s decision is the latest ruling in that request.

The Supreme Court opinion stated it is “hard to understand how the appeals court could rule that AWMS did not have an interest that entitled it to compensation without doing the takings analysis that the appeals court was ordered to do,” the Trevas summary states.

“By deciding the case in this manner, the (appeals) court ventured beyond the scope of our … order,” the ruling states.

The conclusion of the Supreme Court ruling is the appeals court has reversed the appeals court’s decision, and the case returns to the appeals court to “weigh the parties’ evidence” to determine whether the ODNR caused a “total taking” or “partial taking” of the property on which the injection well is located.

The state’s Division of Oil and Gas ordered American AWMS to suspend injection operations in 2014 after two small earthquakes of 1.7-magnitude and 2.1 magnitude took place near the facility that year. The ODNR said the earthquakes were related to American AWMS’ operations, according to the ruling.

The facility has remained closed since the 2014 suspension.