Texas landowner Michael Bishop continues to challenge TransCanada’s right to build the southern route of the Keystone XL pipeline, renamed the Gulf Coast pipeline when the project was divided into segments. Meanwhile, TransCanada is suing the United States for not being granted the presidential permit needed in order to build the Keystone XL‘s northern route. A win for Bishop in his suit against TransCanada Keystone Pipeline L.P. in Nacogdoches County District Court could complicate TransCanada’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) challenge.

Bishop is suing TransCanada for “fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, misrepresentation, perjury, theft, bribery, and violating plaintiff’s rights as delineated under the Constitution of the State of Texas.” His case alleges TransCanada doesn’t rightfully possess common carrier status, which enabled the company to use eminent domain.

On June 4, a judge in Nacogdoches County District Court heard motions by Bishop and TransCanada and made rulings that left Bishop’s case in play. The judge granted Bishop a continuance, giving him more time for discovery, and refused to hear TransCanada’s lawyers’ motion for a ”no-evidence summary judgment” against Bishop that would have stopped his case.

TransCanada’s lawyers argued Bishop’s claims against the company have been asked and answered in other legal challenges by Bishop and other landowners, including Texas rancher Julia Trigg Crawford. Crawford, who challenged TransCanada’s status as a common carrier, lost her case in an appellate court, and then was denied a chance to have her case heard by the Texas Supreme Court.

But Bishop successfully argued that he never was given a chance to fully make his case against TransCanada’s standing as a common carrier, and that the matter is still unsettled.

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