Court Opinion

ID: 9858596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:32:28.274734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:55:03.973898
License: Public Domain

JAMES, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I would reform and affirm the trial court’s summary judgment.
*190I agree with the majority in holding that the reservation in question does not, in the words of Acker v. Guinn, affirmatively and fairly express on its face an intention by the parties to include a substance that must be removed by methods that will, in effect, consume or deplete the surface estate.
In the case at bar, Plaintiff-Appellee Bette Reed, Trustee, has sued for a declaratory judgment, asking the court to tell her what rights Wylie reserved by the 1950 deed reservation, insofar as coal and lignite are concerned. The determination of this matter is strictly a law question, and is governed by Acker v. Guinn.
However, the trial court’s judgment is in error, in that it held that Plaintiff-Appellee Reed was “the owner of all the coal and lignite that may be mined by open pit or strip-mining methods.” What the trial court’s judgment should have held was that Plaintiff-Appellee Reed was the owner of all the coal and lignite that must be mined by open pit or strip-mining methods, which holding would bring the judgment into harmony with Acker v. Guinn and Williford v. Spies, (Waco, Tex.Civ.App., 1975) 530 S.W.2d 127, no writ.
I would reform the judgment so that it would hold that Plaintiff-Appellee Reed is the owner of all of the coal and lignite that must be mined and removed by open pit or strip-mining, and as reformed, I would affirm same. The summary judgment proof shows that there is lignite in the land in controversy, and that is all the summary judgment proof needed to adjudicate this controversy, other than the conveyance instruments before us. The J. A. Hill affidavit may be disregarded.