Court Opinion

ID: 9863057
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 03:00:48.398894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:46:43.995165
License: Public Domain

McGILL, Justice
(dissenting).
I realize that the proper construction of the lease of November 7, 1946 is not free from doubt. However, with due respect to the able brief filed by the Dand Commissioner . and the views of my associates I adhere to the views expressed in our original opinion and adopt that opinion as my dissent. I desire to add that there can be no question but that the parties could by appropriate language lawfully provide that Section 10, the section leased, consisting of ■640 acres, should be divided into one-quarter section tracts for the; purpose of development and payment of delay rentals. This is beside the point. The question is whether they did do so under the lease of November 7, 1946. It may be conceded that the instrument evidences an intention that the drilling of one well on Section 10 ■should exempt 160 acres from payment of delay rentals and that payment of delay rentals on the remaining 480 acres of Section 10 was nevertheless required. Yet there is nothing in the instrument which indicates on which particular portion of Section 10any well should'be drilled'or to which the exemption should apply. It is true,that we judicially know that there.are 160 acres of land in one quarter-section of land, but it does not follow that the 160 acres on which a well is drilled shall comprise any, particular one-quarter section. This is demonstrated in our original opinion •where the question is pose.d as to which particular quarter-section would be exempt should the -well have been drilled in the center of Sectoin 10" where the ;160 acrés on whi'ch it were drilled Could lie in one one-quarter section as well as another. At most the language is vague and indefinite as to just which portion of Section 10 shall be exempt from payment of delay rentals by ■the drilling of a well thereon. The language of Chief Justice Phillips in Decker v. Kirlicks, 110 Tex. 90, 91, loc. cit. 94, 216 S.W. 385, 386, which applied to a forfeiture; should in my opinion be equally applicable to a conditional limitation. “If the provision is ambiguous,, that alone condemns it as a forfeiture provision. A forfeiture should rest upon surer ground. Where a contract is so vague in its terms that a court cannot'determine its- meaning, it would be unjust-to enforce1 a forfeiture under it against one whose only fault has been to possibly mistake its meaning. Forfeitures are harsh and punitive in their operation. They are' not favored by the law, and ought not to be. The authority to forfeit a vested right or estate should riot rest in provisions whose meaning is uri-certain and obscurer It -should be found only in language which is plain and clear, whose unequivocal character may render its exercise fair and rightful.”
It is far better that the vague and indefinite language employed be held to be a futility than that it have the effect of limiting appellants’ estate, conveyed to them by the lease.
For these- reasons and the reasons stated in our original opinion ■ I respectfully dissent.