Court Opinion

ID: 9551564
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:55:28.608478+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:10.822553
License: Public Domain

Schroeder, J.,
dissenting: In my opinion it is arbitrary and unreasonable action by a trial court to cancel an oil and gas lease where the operator, within the time alloted by the trial court to drill a salt water disposal well, drills a well on the leasehold to completion, when the well turns out to be a producer of oil instead of a salt water disposal well. Whether a well drilled on a leasehold for oil and gas turns out to be a salt water disposal well as intended by the operator of the leasehold or a producer of oil is beyond the control of the operator. Under these circumstances the trial court should have given the operator of the leasehold an additional reasonable period of time to drill another well for the disposal of salt water.
During the period of time in question the salt water produced by the production of oil from the two wells drilled by Henry on the leasehold has been hauled away in trucks.
The law abhors a forfeiture. Here the Shaws benefit by a windfall of all production, over the one-eighth royalty reserved to the lessors, from all producing wells bn the leasehold at the expense of the owners of the leasehold, Henry and Benson. In my opinion the decision of the court is unconscionable.
Fatzer, C. J., joins the foregoing dissenting opinion.