Court Opinion

ID: 9638455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:44:08.577239+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:06.593515
License: Public Domain

WILBUR, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent. The above mentioned agreement not to assign the lease without the written consent of the landlord is in form a covenant. There is no agreement that the lease will terminate upon making such an unauthorized assignment, nor for right of reentry for the violation of this covenant and no agreement that such assignment shall operate as forfeiture of the rights of the lessee. 35 C.J. 1189, § 489. Under these circumstances, I think it is going beyond the decisions of the Supreme Court of Montana, cited in the main opinion, to read into the lease a provision for its forfeiture for such unauthorized assignment and to enforce the agreement for forfeiture thus interpolated into the lease. If the lease had provided for a forfeiture for such unauthorized assignment then it is clear under the decisions of the Montana Supreme Court cited in the main opinion that such an agreement in an oil lease is to be liberally, rather than strictly, construed.
If it were the intention of the parties that the assignment without the written consent of the landlord should work a forfeiture, it would have been an easy matter to have said so. In the absence of such an agreement the law provides that the landlord may recover the damages suffered by reason of the unauthorized assignment. It is immaterial that there may be now no one in existence against whom the remedy for damages may be enforced.
The statutes- of Montana relating to unlawful detainer expressly provide for the termination of a lease after three days notice for breach of the covenant not to assign without the written consent of the landlord. Rev.Codes Montana, Code of Civ.Proc. § 9889, subs. 3, 4; cf. Jameson v. Chanslor-Canfield M. Oil Co., 176 Cal. 1, 167 P. 369, dealing with identical provisions of the law of California. These statutes also provide for a relief from such forfeiture in the interests of justice even after an adjudication against the tenant. Rev.Codes Montana, § 9906. These provisions of the Montana Code are rplied upon by the appellee, but by express terms of the statute have no application to leases for life or longer than life. Rev. Code Mont., supra, § 9889. Consequently, they have no application here where the tenant, who has a right to continue to occupy the premises and produce oil and gas .therefrom so long as the supply holds out in commercial quantities, has an estate in the nature of a determinable fee. See Dabney v. Edwards, 5 Cal.2d 1, 53 P.2d 962, 103 A.L.R. 822; Watford Oil & Gas Co. v. Shipman, 233 Ill. 9, 84 N.E. 53, 122 Am.St.Rep. 144.
The judgment should be reversed.