Reserve Petroleum Co. v. Harp

221 S.W.2d 366, 1949 Tex. App. LEXIS 1961
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedApril 18, 1949
DocketNo. 5957
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 221 S.W.2d 366 (Reserve Petroleum Co. v. Harp) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Reserve Petroleum Co. v. Harp, 221 S.W.2d 366, 1949 Tex. App. LEXIS 1961 (Tex. Ct. App. 1949).

Opinion

LUMPKIN, Justice.

On November 19, 1931, appellees, Earl-ton M. Harp and wife, Beth Pool Harp, signed an employment contract with G. T. Blankenship of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. According to the terms of the contract, Blankenship was employed to sell or pool three-eighths of the oil, gas and mineral rights in and under a .tract of land situated in Hale County, Texas, to Farmers Royalty Holding Company. The property is described as the West one-half of Section 70, Block A-4, Abstract 1304, E. M. Harp Survey. In payment of the three-eighths mineral interest the appellees were to accept interest shares in Farmers Royalty Holding Company at the rate of one share for each acre of minerals conveyed to the company. Each share had a par value of $1.' The contract contemplated a minimum of 5,000 mineral shares to complete the pool. To pay Blankenship for hiS services, the appellees agreed to convey to him an undivided one-eighth mineral interest from the same tract of, land from which they had .conveyed the three-eighths •mineral interest to the Company.

At the .time the appellees signed the employment contract, they executed two mineral deeds. The first of these, regular in form and with general warranty of title, purports to convey to Farmers Royalty Holding Company for a consideration of $1 an undivided three-eighths mineral interest in a tract of land situated in Hale County and described as the West one-half of'Section 7, Block A-4, Abstract 1304,- E.. M. [368]*368Harp Survey. Tbe second mineral deed purports to convey to G. T. Blankenship for a nominal consideration a one-eighth interest in the same tract of land. It is to be noticed that the land called for in the contract is described as Section 70, whereas in the mineral deeds the land is described as Section 7.

On this appeal appellants are the Reserve Petroleum Company and the Gulf Coast Western Oil Company. Farmers Royalty Holding Company and G. T. Blankenship are appellants’ predecessors in title.- The suit was instituted by the appellants against the appellees and Stan-olind Oil and Gas Company seeking to recover title and possession of one-half of the oil, gas and other minerals in -and under the West one-half of Section 70, Block A-4, E. M. Harp Survey. Appellants also prayed “for such other relief to which plaintiffs may be entitled.”

Appellees Harp and wife pleaded the four-year statute of limitation, Vernon’s Ann.Civ.St. art. 5529, and that the North 200 acres of the half- section constituted their homestead. Appellee Stanolind-plead-ed a general denial and the four-year statute of limitation. It appears that at the time .-‘appellees Harp and wife executed the mineral deeds mentioned above, they resided upon, occupied, used -and claimed as their homestead -the North 200 acres of the West one-half of Section 70; that although the contract of employment was signed by the Harps, it was not executed by Blankenship; that the Harps failed to acknowledge the execution of the two mineral deeds before a notary public; and that the Harps received 120 shares in the Company.

Trial was -had before-the -court without a jury. Judgment was rendered in favor of the appellants for recovery of one-half the minerals in the South 120 acres of the West one-half of Section 70, but judgment was denied -them for recovery of any part of the minerals in the North 200 acres claimed by the appellees as a homestead. The judgment established the validr ity of the oil, gas arid mineral lease executed and delivered by the appellees Harp and wife and subsequently assigned to ap-pellee. Stanolind Oil and Gas Company. From this judgment, the appellants have perfected an appeal to this -court.

This appeal, in our opinion, is to be solved in answering the issues presented in appellees’ cross assignments of error. We shall, however, discuss appellants’ point of error which contends that the court erred in not awarding appellants, a-s a matter of law, all the mineral interest to and under the South 120 acres of the West one-half of Section 70. Appellants insist that since the contract and deeds purport to -convey an undivided one-half of all the oil, gas and other minerals in and to the 320 acres -and since the Harps have defeated appellants’ recovery to any portion of the North 200 acres of the tract on the ground that the conveyances were! not legally acknowledged, the appellants are entitled to a total of 160 acres of oil, gas and minerals and are, therefore, entitled to recover -all the 120 acres of minerals in the South 120 acres of the West half of Section 70. In support of their claim, the appellants -cite Findlay et al. v. State, 113 Tex. 30, 250 S. W. 651; in which Findlay an-d others were making the contention that they were entitled to receive the approximate 'fifty thousand acres excess in the Capitol Syndicate lands above the three million acres granted them -to build the State Capitol. The State insisted that they were entitled to receive only three million acres -because the contract with Abner Taylor to build the -capítol called for only three million acres and not for a particular -tract of land.

We find nothing in the Findlay case applicable to the issues before us. Because the deeds were not properly acknowledged before a notary public, the appellants admit they have no claim to the North 200 acres used by -appellees as their homestead. Even if we assume that -the appellants were entitled to an undivided one-half of the mineral interest in and under the 320 acre tract, the loss of the 200 acres by reason of the defects in -the deeds, leaves the appellants with -nothing -more than -a breach of -contract, compen-sable in a suit for damages. Hynes et al. v. Packard, 92 Tex. 44, 45 S.W. 562; Casey v. Jones et ux., Tex.Civ.App., 189 S.W.2d 515.

[369]*369In presenting their cross assignments of error, the appellees contend that appellants are not entitled to recover any interest in the half section, not even the one-half mineral interest in the South 120 acres awarded them by the trial court, without first reforming and correcting the deeds upon which they rely to sustain their action of trespass to try title.

A review of the record reveals that the appellants in support of their cause of action introduced the deeds whereby the ap-pellees conveyed to Farmers Royalty Holding Company and G. T. Blankenship (appellants’ predecessors in title) portions of the mineral interest in and under the following described land: “The West one-half of Section 7, Block A-4, Abstract 1304, E. M. Harp Survey, * * * containing 320 acres more or less * * * ”

To overcome the fact that the deeds describe land in Section 7, while the land owned by appellees is in Section 70, appellants introduced various exhibits to show that the other descriptions contained in the deeds, i. e., Block A-4, Abstract 1304, E. M. Harp Survey, were sufficient to designate the West one-half of Section 70. We have carefully examined each of these exhibits. They are of no assistance in locating the land. They leave its location vague, indefinite, uncertain and not such a description as could be applied to any particular tract of land. Without reforming the two deeds the descriptions contained in .them are not sufficient to support an action in trespass to try title.

This court has held that a suit to correct or reform a deed, because of latent ambiguity or mutual mistake, and a suit in trespass to try title may be brought in the same proceedings.

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Related

Baldwin v. Willis
253 S.W.2d 287 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1952)
Reserve Petroleum Co. v. Harp
226 S.W.2d 839 (Texas Supreme Court, 1950)

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221 S.W.2d 366, 1949 Tex. App. LEXIS 1961, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/reserve-petroleum-co-v-harp-texapp-1949.