Court Opinion

ID: 9682498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:12:03.691036+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:39.686889
License: Public Domain

David Newbern, Justice, dissenting. Sometimes we are so carried away by popular rules of construction we ignore the intent of the grantor which can be ascertained from the deed. If the deed had said simply that it conveyed the land reserving or excepting fifty percent of the minerals, I would find the Duhig rule useful, for in that instance there would be ambiguity, and a rule of construction would be of some help. We would not know whether the grantor intended simply to notify the grantee that fifty percent of the minerals had been reserved by a previous grantor or the grantor intended fifty percent to be reserved to himself. Here the grantors’ reservation clearly said the reservation was “for the grantors herein, their heirs and assigns forever.” There is no ambiguity, and I find no need to resort to a rule of construction. The scholarly article quoted by the majority is particularly unpersuasive. It refers to attempts to ascertain a grantor’s intent as “subjective” unless the “actual” intent can be found. That sort of discussion is not helpful to me. Nor can I fathom how prolific application of the Duhig rule will help protect our recording system. If the fifty percent mineral reservation, outstanding at the time of the deed questioned here, was made in a recorded deed, subsequent grantees had constructive notice of it. If it was not recorded, subsequent grantees may be bona fide purchasers in good faith without notice. The Duhig rule has nothing to do with either situation. I am even less impressed with the tricky rationale of the Duhig case. It says the grantor, in one instrument, warrants title to all the surface and all the minerals, reserves some minerals to himself, but having already conveyed them he cannot have them back by analogy to the after acquired title rule. I find my view to be completely in accord with that of Justice Alexander whose dissenting opinion in Salmen Brick & Lumber Co. v. Williams, 210 Miss. 560, 50 So. 2d 130 (1951), is quoted in part in 1 H. Williams and C. Meyers, Oil and Gas Law, § 311, at 580.9 (1984), as follows: I am unable to find support in a theory by which a court seeks gratuitously to save a grantor against an anticipated suit for breach of warranty. A warranty does not effect the conveyance. Title is acquired by the conveyance and guaranteed by the warranty. Nor is a deed void which subjects the grantor to a possible suit to enforce the warranty or for damages. In discussing Justice Alexander’s opinion, Williams and Meyers clarify the real effect application of the Duhig rule will have in the case before us. It will relieve the ultimate grantee of having to pursue his remedy on the warranty by construing the deed to achieve a result contrary to the intent of the grantor. To say the least, I find this to be a novel approach, and I am unwilling to march to the tune of a tortured Texas opinion whose author was not even in step with his own majority. This is an instance in which our herding instinct serves us poorly. I respectfully dissent. Justices Holt and Hickman join in this dissent.