Court Opinion

ID: 9791907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:20:21.310982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:39.328584
License: Public Domain

Herd, J.,
concurring: This is a difficult decision for me because I feel so strongly about the wrongness of our decision in Smith v. Home Royalty Association, Inc., 209 Kan. 609, 498 P.2d 98 (1972).
Classen v. Federal Land Bank of Wichita, 228 Kan. 426, 617 P.2d 1255 (1980), by correcting the error of Smith eight years later, presented the question of how we handle the production and title events which have occurred in that interim.
Smith, in effect, redefined the meaning of “production” by requiring that a well be located on the specific tract under which term mineral interests were reserved in order to perpetuate the term under the habendum clause. Thus, production off the tract *406but on a part of a drilling unit with production attributed to the tract could not be used to hold the mineral interests under the “so long thereafter” clause, as if the term had expired from non-production. Smith terminated all Kansas term mineral interests in their secondary term that did not have a producing well drilled on the specific tract.
So what is the proper way to handle mineral interests which have expired for nonproduction under the rule of Smith? Since it is impossible to ascertain what has happened to the myriad of interests which have expired or how many innocent purchasers for value have changed positions because of Smith, it appears the most stable way to handle the issue is to treat Classen as prospective. To make Classen retrospective would constitute an improper taking of property without just compensation just as had occurred with Smith. Our dilemma brings to mind an old baseball metaphor where the umpire mistakenly called a strike against a batter. That constituted one mistake. Feeling guilty, and wanting to be fair, the umpire then purposely miscalled the next pitch in the batter’s favor, to even the score. The umpire had now made two mistakes. Similarly, Smith was our mistake number one, and I do not think we should compound it by making Classen retrospective.
I concur.