Court Opinion

ID: 9772042
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:05:42.227994+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:41.559819
License: Public Domain

GAMMAGE, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The majority unnecessarily perpetuates the “surface destruction test” and all its contortions when there is no reason to refuse to give the words of the conveyance their plain meaning.
In 1949 M.I. Richardson granted the Richardson heirs their nonparticipating royalty interest. At that time he owned both the surface and mineral estates. The words he used were “all ... other minerals in, under and that may be produced from the ... land.” The grantor could grant royalty from both the surface estate and the mineral estate. He was not limited to granting something only “out of’ the mineral estate because that was all he owned; he owned both the surface and the minerals. The court should give the words their natural and ordinary meaning, and recognize a royalty interest in surface and mineral estate “minerals.” Moser v. U.S. Steel Corp., 676 S.W.2d 99,102 (Tex.1984).
The surface destruction test does not apply to a nonparticipating royalty interest. See Martin v. Schneider, 622 S.W.2d 620, 622 (Tex.App. — -Corpus Christi 1981, writ refd n.r.e.). The surface destruction test is merely a rule of construction for ambiguous conveyances. Schwarz v. State, 703 S.W.2d 187, 189 (Tex.1986). The test only applies if there is doubt whether the parties to the instrument intended for the holder of the mineral rights to have the right to acquire the minerals by destroying the surface owned by the other. Martin, 622 S.W.2d at 621-22. Because the Richardson heirs assert only a nonparticipating royalty interest, which does not vest them with a right to disturb the surface estate owned by the Crews, the surface destruction test does not apply. If the surface owners mine surface minerals, the Richardson heirs should collect their royalties from them. If the mineral estate owners produce subsurface minerals, such as oil or gas, the Richardson heirs should likewise collect royalties from them. Surface destruction is simply irrelevant.
The majority fails to distinguish between royalties that are created in leases and royalties that are granted or reserved without an accompanying lease. Lease-created royalties raise a question of intent about coverage of surface mining whereas the others do not. If the royalty grant is not derivative of a traditional mineral estate interest, there is no reason to limit it. If ownership of the surface and mineral estates is split, the owner of the surface estate needs protection from destruction of the surface by the owner of the mineral estate. When the same party owns both estates and the only other interest is a nonparticipating royalty interest, the rationale supporting the surface destruction test vanishes.
Applying the surface destruction test to non-derivative royalty interests will create confusion in land titles because ownership of royalty interests will not be determinable from deed records alone. See Moser, 676 S.W.2d at 101. Avoiding continued title uncertainty was a principal reason this Court prospectively abandoned the surface destruction test for conveyances of mineral estates. See Gifford-Hill & Co. v. Wise County Appraisal Dist., 827 S.W.2d 811, 815 (Tex.1991).
The surface destruction test should be applied only where its underlying policy is furthered. It applies to royalty interests in leases and to royalty interests created by owners of mineral estates, but not to royalty interests created by owners of surface estates or of both surface and mineral estates. Applying the surface destruction test in this manner is consistent with the policy behind the test. We should minimize the number of situations in which land interest owners must resort to factual determinations of the depth of minerals, etc., to determine ownership because “Determining the ownership of minerals in this manner has resulted in title uncertainty.” Moser, 676 S.W.2d at 101. We need fewer, not more applications of the surface destruction test. Today the majority takes a giant step backward from using common sense to give words their plain (and *793probable intended) meaning, and decreases title certainty in the process. I dissent.