Court Opinion

ID: 9777839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:25:37.07665+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:14.028459
License: Public Domain

KILGARLIN, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. How can Grande, Inc. reserve to itself a one-fourth royalty interest in the half of the mineral estate in which it had no interest? The Grande to *896Fogleman deed clearly evidences that Texas Osage already owned the other one-half mineral interest.
The court purports to rely on King v. First National Bank of Wichita Falls, 144 Tex. 583, 192 S.W.2d 260 (1946), and Middleton v. Broussard, 504 S.W.2d 839 (Tex.1974), yet it ignores the reasoning used in these cases. The court cites King for the proposition that the reservation refers only to the land described, not the land conveyed. However, in King, this court looked “forward from the granting clause and backward from the reservation clause” to determine the land described. 144 Tex. at 587,192 S.W.2d at 263. In this case, the intervening paragraphs between these clauses contain the “subject to” clauses; therefore, they are part of the description. Accordingly, the “subject to” clauses limit and define the land described to that which Grande owned.
This limitation is also in accord with our decision in Bass v. Harper, 441 S.W.2d 825 (Tex.1969), which the court attempts to distinguish. In Bass, the deed also contained a “subject to” clause. While the court correctly notes that in Bass, the “subject to” clause was held to limit the estate granted, it also limited the description of the estate of the grantor.
The court’s reliance on Middleton is similarly misguided. While the court appears to be following Middleton, the court overlooks an important fact. The grantors in Middleton owned all of the surface and mineral estate and conveyed “a lesser undivided surface estate,” reserved all of the minerals, and granted a “one sixty-fourth royalty ‘in and to said tracts of land’.” 504 S.W.2d at 842. Thus, the description of the land necessarily included all that was owned by the grantors. From that description of the land owned by the Broussards, the deed conveyed the lesser included surface estate and the royalty interest in all of the land owned by the Broussards.
Here, Grande only owned a one-half mineral interest. Grande could not have possibly reserved a royalty in the one-half mineral interest of Texas Osage. This case is clearly on point with Hooks v. Neill, 21 S.W.2d 532 (Tex.Civ.App.—Galveston 1929, writ ref’d). In Hooks, Mrs. Neill conveyed her one-half-undivided interest in a certain tract of land and reserved a “one thirty-second of all oil on and under said land and premises herein described and conveyed.” 21 S.W.2d at 538.
The court attempts to distinguish Hooks by arguing that the key language in Hooks was the word “conveyed” in the reservation clause, while in this case, the reservation referred to the land “described.” What the court misses is that both are one and the same. The interest described in the Grande deed is the interest conveyed. Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and hold that the deed reserved a one-fourth royalty from the one-half mineral interest Grande owned at the time of the conveyance.
RAY and WALLACE, JJ., join in this dissent.