Court Opinion

ID: 9638756
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:53:04.38927+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:09.393164
License: Public Domain

DICKENSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 6082 (Vernon 1970) expressly provides that any joint owner of an interest in oil and gas leases may compel a partition thereof. As pointed out by Moseley v. Hearrell, 141 Tex. 280, 283, 171 S.W.2d 337, at 339 (1943):
It may sometimes be inequitable to one or more of the joint owners if another co-owner is permitted to enforce partition of the jointly owned property; but this is one of the consequences which one assumes when he becomes a co-tenant in land. If he does not provide against it by contract, he may expect his co-tenant to exercise his statutory right of partition at will.
The majority has implied an agreement against partition. I am unable to agree to this holding in view of the fact that the parties deleted the paragraph which would have specifically waived the rights to partition when they executed the Operating Agreement which is dated June 15, 1978.
Our Supreme Court stated the rule in Freeport Sulphur Co. v. American Sulphur Royalty Co., 117 Tex. 439, 450, 6 S.W.2d 1039, at 1041 (1928), as follows:
*324The court cannot make contracts for parties, and can declare implied covenants to exist only when there is a satisfactory basis in the express contracts of the parties which makes it necessary to imply certain duties and obligations in order to effect the purposes of the parties in the contracts made. Before a covenant will be implied in the express terms of a contract, and in some cases in view of the customs and practices of the business to which the contract relates, it must appear therefrom that it was so clearly in the contemplation of the parties as that they deemed it unnecessary to express it, and therefore omitted to do so, or that it is necessary to imply such covenant in order to give effect to and effectuate the purpose of the contract as a whole.
See also Land Locators of Texas, Inc. v. La Cour Du Roi, Inc., 592 S.W.2d 7 (Tex.Civ.App. — Beaumont 1979, writ ref’d n. r. e.).
In this case the parties deleted an express contractual provision which the majority opinion now states “must be implied” because of the contract provision which requires the completion or plugging of two wells. I would hold that Tex.R.Civ.P. 770 authorizes a sale of these jointly owned working interests in the oil and gas leases, with the proceeds to be partitioned among the persons entitled thereto. Such a sale would, of course, be subject to the outstanding overriding royalty interests and to the provisions of the Operating Agreement, including the contractual right of reassignment to Hitzelberger if two wells are not drilled and completed or plugged by August 12, 1981.