A provision in a contract, no matter how unequivocal, does not always trump the law. The oil and gas lease allowed assignments, but no change or division in ownership of the land or royalties would be binding on the lessee until the acquiring party had furnished lessee with the instruments constituting his chain of title
Must an Oil and Gas Lessee Accommodate a Cattle Operation?
At Looper Reed we advise our clients that it is good business to accommodate your neighbor informally, if you can. Sometimes that leads to attempted world domination, as Chamberlain learned from Hitler in 1938. Closer to home it is my college-age son using his bedroom floor as a summertime closet. It can also lead to
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Confirms The Dunham Rule
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Or, as said by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, “A rule of property long acquiesced in should not be overthrown except for compelling reasons of public policy or the imperative demands of justice.” There were no such imperatives in Butler vs. Charles Powers Estate, in which the Court
What is an Enforceable Property Description?
Co-author: Travis Booher
Valid Description? We don’t need no valid stinking description!
Actually, in May v. Buck, a Texas Court of Appeals says you do. The need for a sufficient property description in a oil and gas transaction seems like an easy-enough and fundamental concept to grasp, but its application has escaped many a
Deed Restrictions – Good for Barking Dogs, Not Good for Mineral Reservations
By Travis Booher
In Texas title law, “it is well settled that a purchaser is bound by every recital, reference and reservation contained in or fairly disclosed by any instrument which forms an essential link in the chain of title under which he claims.” But does this rule apply to mineral reservations in deed restrictions?
When an Easement Isn’t What it Appears To Be
Here is Something We Know
A Texas mineral estate owner has an implied easement for reasonable use of the surface estate in developing and extracting the minerals below.
And a Question
Can the mineral estate owner and his lessee use the easement to produce from a mineral estate that is pooled with the surface estate?
A Texas Mineral Reservation was a Fractional Royalty
Head-scratchers: (1) Is a mineral reservation a fraction of royalty, or a fractional royalty? (2) Is there a difference? (3) Does it matter?
Answers: (1) It depends on how you phrase it. (2) Yes. (3) Yes, if you care about being paid on production, or you are the scrivener of deeds and assignments and want
Executive Right Owner Could Be Liable for Failing to Forward Royalty Payments
The ghosts of Clinton Manges and people like him continue to haunt executive right owners in Texas. In the 1980’s, Mr. Manges’ abuse of his non-participating royalty owner inspired the Texas Supreme Court to re-affirm the obligations of an executive right owner to the NPRI owner: “utmost fair dealing” and a fiduciary duty.
In Friddle
Mistaken Reference in a Deed to a Mineral Reservation Does Not Reserve the Minerals
“If you want a successful gathering of long-lost kinfolks, just manage to find oil on the old homestead. They will come out from under logs, down trees, from out of the blue and down every road and byway, but they’ll get there — even some nobody ever suspected were kinfolks.”
Judge R. T.Brown, who presided
Ohio Surface Rights Do Not Allow Total Destruction of the Land
Occasionally, we venture beyond the comfortable red-state confines of Texas to visit swing states and discuss mineral activity other than oil and gas drilling; and we go back in time. This is one of those journeys, as we go to Ohio, where the court relied on a decision from the time when Chester A. Arthur