Davis v. COG Operating, LLC, in construing a Warranty Deed with a reservation of minerals, applied the estate-misconception doctrine and denied the presumed grant doctrine. At issue were three instruments:
Texas courts continue to address the “fixed or floating” non-participating royalty interest question. The El Paso Court of Appeals’ answer in Bridges v. Uhl et al. was floating, based on the language in that particular reservation,
In 1940 the Klattenhoffs sold a 640-acre tract in Upton County to Virgil Powell, reserving, “an
Ellison v. Three Rivers Acquisition LLC et al., on remand from the Texas Supreme Court, is the third round of a boundary dispute between mineral lessees in Irion County.
For the history of Ms. Ellison’s odyssey from court to court to court, see our 2019 post discussing the first Court
The question in Brooke-Willbanks v. Flatland Mineral Fund LP, et al was which party to a Texas mineral deed would bear the burden of two previously reserved nonparticipating royalty interests.
The facts
Kay Brooke-Wilbanks owned a 45/100 mineral interest in 320 acres in Howard County, which is equivalent of an undivided 144-acre mineral interest. Her
Co-author Brittany Blakey
The takeaway from Hahn v. ConocoPhillips Company is that in Texas a NPRI holder may not diminish his rights by ratifying pooling of an oil and gas lease unless there are provisions explicitly purporting to do so.
Kenneth and brother George each owned ½ of the surface estate of a tract and
Precious little legal analysis is required to grasp the lesson from Springbok Royalty Partners v. Cook. No mode or manner of legal gymnastics is likely to save parties from the legal effect of a contract they didn’t bother to read before they signed it.
The agreement
Following a lengthy conversation between the Cooks and a
Let’s begin with some Texas law on what a seller sells when he executes a deed:
Generally, a Texas real property deed will confer upon the grantee the greatest estate as the terms of the instrument will permit. This “greatest estate …” differs in concept from the “greatest estate possible”.
A deed will pass whatever
Let’s proceed directly to the takeaways from Fort Apache Energy, Inc. v. Short OG III, Ltd., et al, a Southern District of Texas bankruptcy district court opinion. (Gray Reed partners Jim Ormiston, Gabe Vick and Kristen Kelly represented Short OG III)
The other guy’s operations will not extend your lease beyond the primary
Let’s begin with a quiz. Armour purchases non-recourse mortgage notes, becoming a lienholder in 99 oil and gas leases and 13 wells; fails to record the transfer documents in the real property records; assigns the leases to Sandel, reserving an overriding royalty interest in 23 of the leases; and can’t show that the liens were
This seems to be the season for oil patch courts to return property to its rightful owners. Last week it was a regulatory taking by the City of Dallas. This week it is Northwest Landowners Association v. State of North Dakota, in which the North Dakota Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional on its face a