Court Opinion

ID: 9648577
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:27:59.857956+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:03.316355
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Defendants’ motion for rehearing is grounded upon the point that plaintiffs did not invoke the theory of ratification or revivor. In our opinion plaintiffs, by pleading, proof and brief, have done enough to invoke it. By pleading, they said that the subsequent conduct of the parties gave meaning to an ambiguity in paragraph 2 of the leases, quoted in our opinion, with respect to the sale of gas. The pleading also asserted the specific words of the April 26, 1960 lease, wherein the defendants recognized the validity of the 1958 lease. They alleged that the 1960 lease was a recognition, that defendants made demands for shut-in royalty, and that plaintiffs paid the royalty, “thus clearly evidencing that they recognized said lease as being in full force and effect.”
At the trial the recognition oil lease from Hastings and wife to Holcombe and Mabry was introduced, while Hastings himself was on the stand. Plaintiffs asked him, “now, on the date of this oil lease here, Mr. Hastings, you were still taking the position that Tower Production Company or the assignees still owned the leasehold rights insofar as the gas on that property, is that correct?” To this he answered, “I sure did, I didn’t think it belonged to anybody else at that time, he hadn’t give it up or nothing.” The 1960 recognition lease was admitted without objection.
Plaintiffs’ brief points to the statement of facts and the exhibit of the 1960 lease and makes the argument, “in fact the evidence clearly established that such individuals considered such leases insofar as the gas rights thereunder were concerned were in full force and effect as late as April 28, 1960, when they entered into an Oil Lease to and with C. G. Holcombe on the same property wherein it was recited that the gas rights thereunder were owned by Tower Production Company.”
Most of the trial related to other issues, but when plaintiffs had proved enough, that was and is all that is required of them. The motion for rehearing is overruled.