Court Opinion

ID: 9832933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:18:48.567422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:55.818473
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Since the original opinion was filed in this cause, the Commission of Appeals has recommended, and the Supreme Court has adopted, a decision reversing the judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals of the First District in the case of McRae v. Japhet, 269 S. W. 829, cited with our approval in our original opinion. In that ease the owner and lessor of a tract of land, then under an oil and gas lease, conveyed to a third party his entire estate in a segregated portion of the land, subject to the existing lease upon the entire premises. The Commission of Appeals held that the purchaser of the segregated parcel took title to none of the oil royalty to be derived from operations under the lease, except from wells actually drilled in the segregated parcel purchased by him. They held that the purchaser did not take an undivided interest in the royalty to be derived from the entire premises covered by the lease. In adopting the report of the Commission of Appeals, the Supreme Court did not expressly approve the holding upon the one question determined.
Now, in the case of Hoffman v. Magnolia Co., 273 S. W. 828, the same section of the Commission of Appeals, under an apparently similar state of facts, held that a purchaser of a specifically described subdivision of a larger tract under lease, in the absence of express agreement to the contrary, took an undivided interest in the royalty to be derived from the entire leased premises; that the estate conveyed to him was not restricted to the royalty from wells drilled in the segregated parcel purchased by him. In other words, assuming the facts are alike, as they appear to be, the decisions in the two cases are in direct and irreconcilable conflict. In the Hoffman Case, but not in the other, the Supreme Court not only adopted the report of the Commission of Appeals, but expressly approved their holding upon the controlling question in the decision.
In the instant case, which we are unable to substantially distinguish from the two eases cited, we followed the decision in the Hoffman Case, and held that under the facts the purchaser of the segregated parcel of leased premises took a proportionate undivided interest in the royalty to be derived froip the entire premises; that, in the absence of an express stipulation therefor, his estate was not restricted to the royalty to be derived from operations upon the segregated parcel purchased by him.
As we perceive no distinction between the three cases, and are unable to distinguish either of them from either of the other two, we feel obliged to adhere to the holding adopted in the original opinion herein.
But, inasmuch as that holding was only incidental to and cannot affect the result reached in the case, we overrule appellants’ motion for rehearing. .