Photo of Charles Sartain

Charles Sartain

Subscribe to Charles Sartain's Posts
Contact:Read more about Charles Sartain

Co-author Chance Decker

Recall the Battle of the Bastards: The heroic Lady Sansa and the duplicitous Lord Baelish gallop over the hill to save the foolish Jon Snow from the heinous Ramsey Bolton. In similar fashion, but without the malnourished canines, the Texas Supreme Court in Conoco Phillips Company v. Koopmann saved the Koopmanns and you, the document drafters and title examiners, from brutal application of the Rule Against Perpetuities.
Continue Reading NPRI Reservation Survives Rule Against Perpetuities

Co-author Chance Decker

The ruling from the Supreme Court of Texas in JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., et al v. Orca Assets, G.P., L.L.C. was foreseeable. Experienced energy professionals who pass on the opportunity to examine title for themselves are not sympathetic plaintiffs in a suit claiming reliance on oral statements of the lessor.

How did this happen? 
Continue Reading Fraud Claim Rejected for Unreasonable Reliance

There are specific requirements for proving that an oil and gas lease has survived past its primary term. Fail to hit them all when the lease is challenged at the courthouse, and disappointment will be order of the day.

The heart of the dispute in J&L Oil Company v. KM Oil Company was whether plaintiff J&L satisfied the requirements of a Pugh clause in a 1951 lease. J&L sued KM for impinging upon J&L’s lease on 55 acres in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Summary judgment in favor of KM, the alleged impinger, was affirmed.
Continue Reading Lack of Proof Dooms Pugh Clause Defense

Let’s get right to the takeaway: Despite the humble hourly rate operators are typically willing to fork over for title examination, the job isn’t easy and you’d better put your trust in a practitioner with expertise, patience, and an eye for detail.

It took a court of appeal two tries to get this one right, after being enlightened by an aggrieved party. These errors are typically discovered in the real life of a producer when an aggrieved royalty owner says you’ve overpaid somebody else. Let’s hope the well is still producing when they bring the matter to your attention.
Continue Reading Mineral Title Examination – It’s Not Easy  

Are you “woke”* vis-vis-vis global warming and the coming-any-day-now destruction of the coral reefs, the arctic ice pack, polar bears, coastlines, the flora, the fauna, you, me, and the entire natural world as we know it? Me neither. That’s because I elect to look past the first dozen or so results from a Google search of “global warming”, “climate change”, and related topics.
Continue Reading There is Another Way to Report on Global Warming

Co-author Chance Decker  

Proving once again that gratitude is the rarest of human emotions, a contract between a landman and his client was deemed unenforceable, leaving the landman with nothing, even though he actually secured oil and gas leases for the client (at least he said that he did). In Moore v. Bearkat Energy Partners, LLC, independent landman Moore signed a contract with the purported agent of Lane.  Lane would pay Moore “$600 per mineral acre for each and every lease [Lane] enter[ed] with [Moore’s] assistance.”  Moore said he helped Lane secure numerous leases, but Lane refused to pay.
Continue Reading Landman Defeated by the Statute of Frauds

Co-author Paul Yale

Issues surrounding the legality of allocation wells in Texas have been percolating for some time, and lately we’ve heard of potential litigation. So, what’s the fuss about? The results in Klotzman (a Texas Railroad Commission dispute) and Spartan et al v. EOG (a district court case) didn’t resolve the legal questions. Both settled before a ruling. Browning Oil Company v. Luecke provided theoretical underpinnings but didn’t go far enough.

Why does the controversy exist?
Continue Reading Is the Allocation Well Debate About to Boil Over?

Chauvin v. Shell Oil Company et al is the pot full of legal unpleasantness that can be stirred up by landmen trying to buy easements, leases, and the like.

A number of plaintiffs – descendants of grantors of two parcels of land in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana – were contacted by pipeline companies seeking servitudes. Apparently believing that betting on litigation offered a better return than the trifecta at the Fairgrounds, the descendants sued Shell and several pipeline companies holding servitudes from Shell for trespass. In the end, the court denied the plaintiff’s claims; they couldn’t carry their burden to prove their ownership of the property.
Continue Reading Trespass Plaintiff: First, Prove Your Ownership

Email is the way we communicate these days. Whether  emails create a contract is important if you’re thinking nothing short of scribblings on a piece of old parchment could ever bind anybody or, to the contrary, your goal is to establish an enforceable agreement. Before hitting “send”, consider Bujnoch v. Copano.  Questions of fact precluded a summary judgment denying an agreement. A jury will decide the question. 
Continue Reading Can Emails Establish an Easement in Texas?