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Nature of Suit Code: 290
Nature of Suit: Other Real Property Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 09-3117

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Larry Griffis; Onita Griffis; *

Carolyn Hudson, *

*

Appellants, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the Eastern

* District of Arkansas.

Anadarko E & P Company, LP; *

Anadarko Land Corporation; *

Upland Industrial Development *

Company; Chesapeake Exploration, *

LLC, *

*

Appellees. *

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Submitted: March 9, 2010

Filed: June 8, 2010

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Before BYE, ARNOLD, and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.

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ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

Larry Griffis and others filed this action to quiet title in certain natural gas

rights against Anadarko E&P Company, L.P., Chesapeake Exploration, LLC, and

others. We refer to the plaintiffs as Mr. Griffis and to the defendants as Anadarko.

Mr. Griffis claimed title to the mineral interests at issue as owner of the fee in the

relevant property, and Anadarko traces its title to a reservation in a 1936 deed in the

parties' common chain of title. The reservation, in pertinent part, excepted from the

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The Honorable William R. Wilson, United States District Judge for the Eastern

District of Arkansas.

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grant "all of the minerals under the land ... together with the right to enter upon said

land ... and ... drill for and remove minerals ... under the said land and to place ... such

... pipe lines ... as may be proper, necessary or convenient in ... drilling for or removal

... of any minerals." The district court1

 held that this language was, as a matter of law,

sufficient to reserve in the grantor the right to natural gas and therefore entered

judgment in favor of Anadarko. Mr. Griffis appeals and we affirm.

In this diversity case, we apply the substantive law of Arkansas. See PHL

Variable Ins. Co. v. Fulbright McNeill, Inc., 519 F.3d 825, 828 (8th Cir. 2008). The

parties' arguments, and the district court's opinion, center mainly on what is known as

the Strohacker doctrine because of its origin in Missouri Pac. R.R. Co. v. Strohacker,

202 Ark. 645, 152 S.W.2d 557 (1941). That case involved deeds executed in 1892

and 1893 that reserved "all ... mineral deposits" in the tract conveyed, and the

Supreme Court of Arkansas concluded that, despite the reservation, the right to natural

gas passed to the grantees. The successors to the grantees, the court held, were

entitled to judgment because the party claiming the benefit of the reservation had not

shown that, at the time and in the locale where the deeds were executed, gas

production or exploration was general, and legal or commercial usage assumed that

gas was "within the term 'minerals'." Id. at 646, 650-51, 401 S.W.2d at 558, 561. In

the case before us, the district court decided that the Strohacker criteria were met as

a matter of law and thus the reservation included the rights to natural gas.

We don't find it necessary to reach the interesting and surprisingly complex

issue of whether Mr. Griffis's claim can pass muster under Strohacker, because we

think that Anadarko was entitled to judgment on another ground. It is important for

present purposes to recognize that the Strohacker decision dealt with deeds executed

in 1892 and 1893 and that the court, speaking in 1941, observed that "it can no longer

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be doubted that a reservation of minerals, or of mineral rights, is sufficient to identify

oil and gas." Strohacker, 202 Ark. at 652, 152 S.W.2d at 561. What this means is that

in any deed of Arkansas land executed on or after the date of the 1941 deed involved

in Strohacker, a generic, unmodified reference to minerals includes the rights to

natural gas as a matter of law. Presumably, that was because the Arkansas Supreme

Court did not doubt that gas exploration or production was by that time general

throughout the state or that legal or commercial usage everywhere in the state had by

that time come to accept gas as a mineral. It was only old deeds that presented an

interpretive difficulty. 

But this is not the only Arkansas case that provides a bright-line temporal rule

with respect to the meaning of a general grant or reservation of minerals. In Sheppard

v. Zeppa, 199 Ark. 1, 133 S.W.2d 860 (1939), which dealt with a deed of Arkansas

land executed in 1935, the court flatly held that a reservation of "the mineral rights in,

upon and under" the relevant tract "was effective to withhold oil, gas, and other

minerals from the conveyance." Id., 199 Ark. at 12-13, 133 S.W.2d at 866. In other

words, Sheppard established the principle that any deed of Arkansas mineral rights

generally, executed at the time or after the deed in that case was executed, carries the

rights to natural gas with it. Our confidence in this conclusion draws strength from

the Strohacker court's citation of Sheppard with approval and from the structure of the

Strohacker opinion itself. Strohacker, 202 Ark. at 651-52, 152 S.W.2d at 561. Since

the deed from which Anadarko deraigned its title was executed in 1936, Anadarko

was entitled to judgment. 

Affirmed.

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