Court Opinion

ID: 9546038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:24:00.231422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:55.145643
License: Public Domain

On Respondent’s Petition por Rehearing
*128GOODWIN, J.
On petition for rehearing, the plaintiff-respondent called to the court’s attention the pendency of an action in the Circuit Court for Hood River County in which the plaintiff is seeking damages for the removal of timber by the defendants from the land of the plaintiff.
The plaintiff contends that notwithstanding our holding that the defendant Hood River County did not lose its rights in the timber which was merchantable at the time of its deed in 1945, the county could not, after its conveyance, exercise any rights in the land or timber thereon which became merchantable thereafter.
The deed contained a reservation of “all timber” without qualification that the timber be merchantable. However, this court held in Arbogast et al v. Pilot Rock Lbr. Co., 215 Or 579, 586, 336 P2d 329, that “all timber” means all timber which, on the date of the contract, was of a size suitable for manufacturing into lumber. And see eases cited therein.
Accordingly, the timber reserved to the county, and which our opinion held the county had the right to sell in 1954, was the timber which was merchantable in 1945 when the county deeded the land to the plaintiff’s grantor. Doherty et ux v. Harris Pine Mills, 211 Or 378, 425, 315 P2d 566. Any trees which became merchantable timber after the conveyance accrued to the benefit of the landowner, and were not subject to the reservation in the deed. The county could have logged the merchantable timber immediately, and its delay in removing the timber could not operate to divest the landowner of young growth, saplings, and the like, some of which may have become merchantable timber during the nine years *129which elapsed before the county removed the reserved timber. All the earlier Oregon decisions are considered at length in Mr. Justice Brand’s opinion in Doherty et ux v. Harris Pine Mills, supra (211 Or at 419 et seq.).
Our former opinion is modified to withdraw any implication that the landowner is foreclosed in his pending trespass action from proof, if any he may have, that timber was wrongfully removed by the defendants, limited, however, to timber that was not merchantable in 1945 but became merchantable thereafter.
The decree appealed from was entered in the form of a declaratory decree, and the mandate should provide for the entry of an amended decree declaring the rights of the parties in accordance with the views expressed in our former opinion as modified herein.
The petition for rehearing is denied.