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Try CasePortal for FreeJ. Niemeyer finds the lower court improperly abstained from ruling on the federal constitutional claims. Two landowners sought to challenge a new West Virginia law that authorized the combining of separately owned mineral tracts to form a single operating unit overlapping all or part of a common source of oil or gas, claiming the statute constitutes a taking of their property and deprives them of property without due process of law, in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The lower court abstained, claiming the case would be better litigated in state courts. According to the lower court, the West Virginia constitutional provision is not ‘broad and sweeping’ but is directly pertinent to the issues presented in this case. The lower court did not identify the West Virginia constitutional provision that it had in mind, nor did it identify any state law issue on which the commission’s motion to dismiss the federal constitutional claims would turn. Reversed.