In the case of Jones et al., Trustees v. Prairie Oil and Gas Company, 1926, the U.S Supreme Court was tasked with determining whether a Kansas law that prohibited oil companies from wasting gas by burning it off in flares (a process known as "gas flaring") violated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. The trustees of various properties sued Prairie Oil and Gas Company for violating this state law, arguing that such practices wasted valuable natural resources. On its part, Prairie contended that complying with this law would be economically unfeasible because there were no available markets or technologies to capture and sell all produced gas at their fields during oil extraction operations. The court ruled in favor of Prairie Oil & Gas Co., stating that while states have an interest in conserving natural resources within their borders, they cannot impose regulations on businesses which make it impossible for them to operate profitably under current market conditions without offering compensation. This ruling established a precedent regarding how far states can go when imposing environmental regulations on businesses.

In the dissenting opinion for Jones et al., Trustees, v. Prairie Oil and Gas Company, Justice Holmes disagreed with the majority's ruling that oil extracted from beneath a property was not part of the land itself but rather a separate entity. He argued that this interpretation contradicted common law principles which state that anything attached to or under a piece of land is considered part of it. Furthermore, he contended that if oil were indeed separate from the land, then any contract involving its extraction would be void as it would constitute an illegal sale of real estate without proper documentation. Finally, he expressed concern over potential negative implications on future cases regarding mineral rights and ownership disputes due to this decision.