In the case of Helis v. Ward, Executrix, et al., 1939, the Supreme Court was tasked with determining whether a Louisiana law that allowed for forced pooling of oil and gas interests violated due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiff argued that this law essentially took private property without just compensation by forcing landowners to share their mineral resources with others in a common pool. However, the court ruled against them stating that such regulation is within state police power when it's done to prevent waste or protect correlative rights of owners in a common source of supply. Therefore, they concluded there were no constitutional violations as long as each owner received fair shares from production and costs were equitably distributed among all participants.

In the dissenting opinion for HELIS v. WARD, EXECUTRIX, et al., 1939 case, it was argued that the majority's decision to uphold Louisiana's inheritance tax law as applied in this case violated both due process and equal protection principles under the Fourteenth Amendment. The dissenting justices believed that by taxing a non-resident decedent’s shares of stock in a Louisiana corporation at their full value without deducting liabilities owed to out-of-state creditors, Louisiana unfairly subjected these assets to double taxation - once by Louisiana and again by the state where those debts were payable. They contended that such an approach resulted in unequal treatment between resident and non-resident shareholders because only residents could offset their share values with any corporate debt owed within the state. This disparity was seen as violating constitutional guarantees of fairness and equality before law.