Court Opinion

ID: 9527568
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:31:37.368137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:54.419365
License: Public Domain

McCALEB, Justice
(dissenting).
The only ground on which the cancellation of the lease in the instant case is presently sought is that the lessee failed in its obligation to pay lessor production royalties. However, since lessee admittedly paid plaintiff “shut-in” royalties amounting to more than would have been due him as production royalties, it seems clear to me that plaintiff has no cause for complaint.
It is fundamental that the function of a court is to redress wrongs and where there has been no injury there is no cause for judicial action. The Bill of Rights of our Constitution, particularly Section 6 of Article 1, provides:
“All courts shall be open, and every person for injury done him in his rights, lands, goods, person or reputation shall have adequate remedy by due process of law and justice administered without denial, partiality or unreasonable delay.”
*651Tile converse ' of this provision seems particularly applicable to this case, that is, that one who has not sustained an injury cannot obtain redress in a judicial tribunal. Yet, in the case at bar, the majority deduce that, notwithstanding the fact that plaintiff has received greater payments in royalties than he would have received if they had been computed as production royalties, he is entitled to a cancellation of the lease because it was “only coincidental” that the shut-in royalties were larger and that “it could have been the reverse”, i. e., that it was possible that the payments, like those in the Melancon case, 230 La. 593, 89 So.2d 135, might have been insufficient to satisfy the amount due plaintiff for production royalties.
I think the fallacy of this reasoning is that we are not here called upon to determine whether lessee could have breached the lease by paying the royalties as shut-in royalties but whether it actually breached the lease though paying an amount ample to comply with its terms, merely because such payments were designated as “shut-in” royalties.
The majority conclude that the lease must fall, despite the sufficiency of the payments, because of the erroneous designation of the payments as “shut-in” royalties and, this, for the reason that, since plaintiff’s rights could have been affected, “ * * * courts should always (as we .are doing here) intervene to protect those rights”.
Those “rights”, of which the majority ■speak and are endeavoring to protect in ■ this case, are purely imaginary as no contractual right of plaintiff has been violated, unless it was the right to insist that the payments be earmarked as production royalties. But, even if such an illusory right existed, it was waived by plaintiff in this instance as he accepted the “shut-in” royalties by placing them in his bank account for his own use. And, since the payments made more than satisfied lessee’s obligation to pay royalty or rent, I find it difficult to perceive that plaintiff has any cause for seeking forfeiture of the lease.
I respectfully dissent.