Local Governments Continue to Fight States for Right to Govern Fracking
A recent decision by the Fourth Court of Appeals reiterates the Texas judiciary’s commitment to interpreting the four corners of a document where language is unambiguous, and to giving plain and ordinary meaning to the...more
One of the first lessons in every first-year real property law class is that property rights are commonly referred to as a “bundle of sticks” that can be sold or acquired as individual parts or a whole. In a case recently...more
Foreshadowing a grim future for family weddings and funerals, Bell and Petsch v. Petch is a property dispute over five tracts of land in Gillespie County, Texas, in which siblings are the combatants. The events are less...more
If you are scoring at home, count Permico Royalties LLC v. Barron Properties, Ltd., as a win for “floating” in the fixed-or-floating royalty battles. Permico, successor to grantors in a 1937 Deed for a tract in Ward County,...more
Let’s assume you own a 160-acre farm in Washington County. Your father purchased the farm in 1992 from a local farmer named Jones. (the “1992 Deed”). At the time your father purchased the farm, there was an oil and gas lease...more
Rhetorical Question: When will Texas be done with fixed/floating royalty cases such as Johnson et al v. Clifton et al? Rhetorical Answer: When scriveners of deeds that are open to eight conceivably plausible meanings...more
Let’s assume your grandfather owned 99 acres in Washington County. In 1955, he sells a small portion of the farm to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in order to facilitate the construction of new State Route 39. This acreage...more
The calculation of production royalties and the deduction of post-production costs remains a controversial topic here in Pennsylvania. As we have written before, there is another frustrating and often confusing...more
Let’s begin with some Texas law on what a seller sells when he executes a deed: Generally, a Texas real property deed will confer upon the grantee the greatest estate as the terms of the instrument will permit. This...more
You might recall this post on Broadway National Bank, Trustee v. Yates Energy Corporation. We now have Yates Energy Corporation et al v. Broadway National Bank, Trustee, the court of appeals’ ruling after remand. Recall the...more
Those who continue to be horrified by Broadway National Bank, Trustee v. Yates Energy Corp. should be relieved that the result in Endeavor Energy Resources, LP v. Anderson was more equitable. In Yates, the Texas Supreme Court...more
The question presented in Aaron v. Fisher et al: Did mineral deeds bestow separate property upon the grantees by gift, or did they convey a community property interest to the grantees and their spouses by sale for...more
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. International Development Corporation resolved the question, In a 100 year old Pennsylvania deed is a “subject to” provision an exception to a grant or a warranty disclaimer?...more
On February 15, 2022, the Supreme Court of Ohio issued its decision in Peppertree Farms, L.L.C., et al. v. Thonen, et al., providing further clarity on the common law distinction between a “reservation” of a property interest...more
It was jurisprudential Groundhog Day as the Supreme Court of Texas handed down Nettye Engler Energy v. Bluestone Natural Resources, another in a series of postproduction cost disputes, only two days after Puxsutawney Phil...more
What if you pay good money for a mineral interest and record the deed in the official public records, thereby securing your title? What if your predecessors-in-title decide among themselves they made a material mistake in a...more
Bell v. Midway Petroleum Grp., L.P., 9th Dist.] Mar. 18, 2021 was a trespass to try title action, suit to quiet title for possession of a land, and a counterclaim for title by adverse possession. ...more
BlueStone Nat. Res. II, LLC v. Nettye Engler Energy, LP is another Texas case deciding whether language creating a nonparticipating royalty interest prohibited deduction of post-production costs. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t....more
When Winston Churchill used this phrase in 1906 in his speech to the House of Commons, he probably did not have in mind the construction of language contained in a deed. Nevertheless, terminological inexactitude in drafting a...more
Here we continue our discussion of the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in Piranha Partners et al. v. Joe B. Neuhoff et al. determining that an assignment of an overriding royalty in minerals unambiguously conveyed the override...more
On March 5, 2019, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court issued an opinion in O'Layer McCready v. Dep't of Cmty. & Econ. Dev., No. 778 C.D. 2018, _ A.3d _ (Pa. Commw. Ct. Mar. 5, 2019), affirming a Board of Property ruling that...more
Marsha Ellison v. Three Rivers Acquisition, LLC, et al. reminds us what is required for an instrument to be a conveyance and what is required for a stipulation to be effective....more
In a ruling that could benefit mineral owners who don’t regularly examine county deed records (to-wit, you?) the Supreme Court of Texas in Carl M. Archer Trust No. Three v. Tregellas held that the discovery rule delayed the...more
Did Moses worry about the mineral rights when he parted the Red Sea? Maybe Charlton Heston knows. What we know is that 3,500 years later if you plan to partition surface rights, the time to pay attention to the minerals is...more
On May 9, 2014, the Pennsylvania Superior Court reinvigorated a practice in Pennsylvania known as “title washing,” which has gained importance in recent years due to the development of the Marcellus Shale. Herder Spring...more