Court Opinion

ID: 9635888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:09:25.742201+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:35:05.350426
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Justice
(concurring).
Originally, I did not agree with the Court’s judgment in this cause; however, after further consideration, I have concluded that the Relator’s motion for rehearing should be overruled for the following reasons:
Relator urges in its motion for rehearing that the law of rescission as applicable to ordinary contracts is controlling between the State as vendor and relator as vendee. Relator says that its tender, though late, avoided a rescission. In Duval Corporation v. Sadler, 407 S.W.2d 493 (Sup.Ct.1966) this Court treated the statutory requirements for the purchase of mineral lands as a statutory offer by the State. We held that a purchaser’s compliance with the several statutory conditions precedent is necessary before there can be an acceptance. Under this construction, money expended by relator for locating, posting and surveying (Arts. 5390-5393) mineral lands are not partial payment to the State for mineral awards. Those were costs to relator in its efforts to comply with the essential conditions precedent to its acceptance of the statutory offer of the mineral awards in question. In Duval Corporation, supra, we restated the settled principle that compliance with the statutory requirements is essential to the sale of mineral lands and that an award itself is not the sale. We said:
“ * * * Articles 5388-5403 do not in any manner vest the Land Commissioner with authority to refuse to issue such awards, when the fact is, or when the Land Commissioner has ascertained the fact to be, that the applicant, Duval in this case, has factually done the things which the legislative offer of such statutes require. (Citing cases). In Pohle v. Robertson, [102 Tex. 274, 115 S. W. 1166] this Court said: ‘The legal efficacy of a purchaser of school land comes from the law which gives effect to the taking of the steps by which it authorizes the acquisition of title, and not *898from the consent of the officer to an application.’ In Schneider, [Schneider v. Lipscomb County Nat’l Farm Loan Ass’n. 146 Tex. 66, 202 S.W.2d 832] this Court said that the award is not a sale. The sale is ‘accomplished by the offer made by the State in the statute [in our case 5388-5403] which prescribes the terms and conditions of the sale, and by the acceptance of the offer by the intending purchaser in his taking the several steps for purchase as set out in the statute.’ ”
Article 7, Section 4 of the Texas Constitution says that Public School Lands “shall be sold.” There must be a sale; otherwise, one collides with the constitutional prohibition of gifts of public lands. Wheeler v. Stanolind Oil & Gas Co., 151 Tex. 418, 252 S.W.2d 149 (1952); State v. Post, 106 Tex. 468, 169 S.W. 407 (1914), rev. 106 Tex. 500, 171 S.W. 707.
For these reasons, the failure to make an initial payment in the correct amount and on time has consistently been treated differently from a failure to make subsequent payments after an obligation arises on the part of the State. In Gracey v. Hendrix, 93 Tex. 26, 51 S.W. 846 (1899), an award was held void although a tender of an initial payment was accepted one day late. See, also, Fitzhugh v. Johnson, 105 Tex. 318, 148 S.W. 286 (1912); Wanke v. Foit, 80 Tex. 591, 16 S.W. 329 (1891); Rone v. Kuehn, 81 S.W.2d 194 (Tex.Civ.App., 1935, writ ref’d).
Relator made no tender of the initial payment within thirty days of the award nor until the lapse of more than four months in some instances and a lapse of almost six months in others. The Commissioner correctly treated relator’s nonpayment of even the initial payment as grounds to refuse the late tender. Relator had no contract with the State, for it had paid nothing to the State, and was under no obligation to do so. Relator is thus in the position of urging that the Commissioner was powerless to exercise his judgment in refusing to accept a late tender, during which late period, relator says it had rights but no obligations and the State had obligations but no rights. In my opinion the awards delivered to Cobra had not arisen to the status of a sale, and the Commissioner was under no ministerial duty to accept the late tender.