Grisham v. Southland Royalty Company

1958 OK 248, 332 P.2d 1099, 10 Oil & Gas Rep. 51, 1958 Okla. LEXIS 474
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedOctober 21, 1958
Docket37937
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 1958 OK 248 (Grisham v. Southland Royalty Company) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Grisham v. Southland Royalty Company, 1958 OK 248, 332 P.2d 1099, 10 Oil & Gas Rep. 51, 1958 Okla. LEXIS 474 (Okla. 1958).

Opinion

BLACKBIRD, Justice.

Defendant in error and plaintiffs in error will be referred to as “plaintiff” and “defendants”, respectively, as they appeared in the trial court. Plaintiff’s purpose in commencing the action, on March 3, 1954, was to quiet its title to an undivided one-fourth of the minerals, hereinafter referred to as “royalty”, in and under an 80-acre tract of land. Its asserted right to this relief was based upon the warranty of title contained in the mineral deed by which defendants’ ancestor, S. C. Newbern, now deceased, and his then wife, conveyed the royalty to it in 1929. At that time, the tract of land, of which the royalty was an integral part, was owned by C. D. and Rilla Bussa, husband and wife, and was encumbered by a real estate mortgage, apparently held by one Cordelia Sandridge. Also, Bussa had a promissory note indebtedness at the Byars State Bank, and Newbern, as its president, had obtained, as security for said indebtedness and another debt Bussa owed the American State Bank of Rosedale, in which Newbern was a major stockholder, a quit claim deed to the land, naming him (Newbern) as grantee. It was while he was thus holding record title to the tract, that Newbern sold and conveyed, to plaintiff, the royalty here involved, and, with the sales proceeds, paid taxes due 'and delinquent thereon and the expenses of the sale, and credited the balance on Bussa’s note at the Byars bank.

Thereafter, Cordelia Sandridge foreclosed her mortgage on the land and bid it in at the mortgage foreclosure sale, obtaining title by sheriff’s deed, dated April 8, 1932. On the third day thereafter, Cordelia Sandridge and her husband conveyed the tract, by quit claim deed, to one C. B. Godard, who accepted title in his name for the two above-named banks in the proportion of an undivided one-half interest for each.

Thereafter, Mr. Newbern died in 1941, leaving his stock in the Byars State Bank in trust for the defendants herein. Apparently the testamentary trust, created in Newbern’s will, continued to hold the stock until after the bank ceased to do business in 1944. Upon liquidation and distribution of said bank’s assets, the trustees, under Newbern’s will, conveyed the subject real estate to defendants on the basis of the bank stock they had inherited, as aforesaid. This vested in them a royalty interest in the land larger than the one-quarter interest originally conveyed by the said S. C. Newbern to plaintiff, while Newbern was holding title to the whole for the banks, as security for Bussa’s indebtedness to them, as aforesaid.

In the answer defendants filed to plaintiff’s petition, they alleged some of the facts above related, and pleaded that plaintiff’s cause of action was barred by the fifteen-year statute of limitations, Tit. 12 O.S.1951 § 93, subds. (1) and (4), and 12 O.S.Supp. sec. 95, subds. 1, 3 and 7.

In its reply, plaintiff pleaded that when C. B. Godard acquired title to the property, as aforesaid, “he took and held title to an undivided Wtfths interest therein in trust for the use of S. C. Newbern and his wife, the defendant Leta Rue Newbern”, and that thereby and thereupon, plaintiff’s title to the undivided one-fourth royalty interest involved herein “re-vested in it by operation of law.” Plaintiff further alleged, in substance, that upon Newbern’s death, defendants succeeded to all of his right, title and interest.

After trial of the cause by the court, it entered judgment for plaintiff, and defendants thereafter perfected the present appeal.

*1101 The first proposition under which defendants seek reversal of the trial court’s judgment is as follows:

“The Oklahoma After Acquired Statute (16 O.S.1951, sec. 17) is clear and unambiguous. By its plain language, it applies to a grantor only. The heirs of a grantor are not included in the statute; it has no application to them. Property acquired by an heir by purchase does not inure to the benefit of his ancestor’s grantee.”

Defendants assume, without conceding, that for the purpose of their arguments under this proposition, Newbern’s execution and delivery of the mineral deed to plaintiff rendered him personally liable on the express and implied warranties of title, and against encumbrances, therein contained, even though he, at that time, as the evidence in this case discloses, was not the true owner. And, we think that this must be considered a legal actuality — rather than a mere assumption; and the fact that New-bern was not the real owner is irrelevant and immaterial in this case. In Weaver v. Drake, 79 Okl. 277, 193 P. 45, it was held:

“Whatever may be the form or nature of the conveyance used to pass real property, if the grantor sets forth ■ on the face of the instrument, by way of recital or averment, that he is seised or possessed of a particular estate in the premises, and which estate the deed purports to convey, or, what is the same thing, if the seisin or possession of a particular estate is affirmed in the deed, either in express terms or by necessary implication, the grantor and all persons in privity with him shall be estopped from ever afterwards denying that he was so seised and possessed at the time he made the conveyance.”

The sections of the statute defendants say are involved in the substantive issue of en-forcibility against them, of Newbern’s warranty of title are Tit. 16 O.S.1951 §§ 17 and 19. In apparent recognition of the fact that, by specific wording, the latter section makes such a warranty binding upon a grantor’s heirs, as well as himself, defense counsel divide their argument, under their first proposition, into two parts, the first part dealing with section 19, and the last part with section 17.

In the first part, they say section 19 is the one dealing with express warranty, and then, by their argument, infer that this is the proper one under which to bring an action for damages for the breach of such a warranty. In the course of said argument, they maintain that such cause of action accrued to plaintiff when it was evicted, the date of which eviction they fix as April 6, 1932, when they say the sheriff’s sale to Cordelia Sandridge was confirmed. On the basis of this hypothesis, the absence of any evidence that plaintiff made demand on Newbern at any time before his death in 1941, and their representation that, by doing so, it could probably have recovered its damage from him, counsel conclude that such cause of action on the warranty was barred five years after April 6, 1932, or in 1937. We find such argument and defendants’ further argument concerning the absence of any evidence that plaintiff ever presented any claim for such damages against Newbern’s estate, both inapplicable and ineffective as ground for reversing the trial court’s judgment. This court’s opinion in Marx v. Beard, Okl., 302 P.2d 132, clearly demonstrates that a cause of action, like plaintiff’s for quieting title (instead of for damages for breach of such warranty) could not have accrued, if at all, before New-bern’s death in 1941, and defendants’ entry into the chain of title to the property by becoming vested with an interest therein.

In the second part of their argument under their first proposition, in which only section 17, supra, is considered (as if completely disassociated with section 19, supra) defendants rely on the fact that this section, unlike sec.

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Bluebook (online)
1958 OK 248, 332 P.2d 1099, 10 Oil & Gas Rep. 51, 1958 Okla. LEXIS 474, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/grisham-v-southland-royalty-company-okla-1958.