Turner v. Sooner Oil & Gas Co.

1952 OK 171, 243 P.2d 701, 206 Okla. 344, 1952 Okla. LEXIS 588
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedApril 23, 1952
Docket34832
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 1952 OK 171 (Turner v. Sooner Oil & Gas Co.) 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
Turner v. Sooner Oil & Gas Co., 1952 OK 171, 243 P.2d 701, 206 Okla. 344, 1952 Okla. LEXIS 588 (Okla. 1952).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

This is an action wherein plaintiff in error, plaintiff below, sought to recover a money judgment on a contract to drill an oil and gas well entered into with the defendant Sooner Oil & Gas Company, an Oklahoma corporation which appears to have been dissolved subsequent to the making of the contract and prior to the bringing of the action. The defendants, George F. Collins, Jr., H; C. Hugh; Frank P. Collins and C. F. Pfeffer, are alleged to have been stockholders, directors and officers of the defendant corporation at the time of its dissolution and recovery against them seems to be sought upon the theory that the plaintiff was not notified of the contemplated dissolution and thus prevented from filing his claim for payment prior to dissolution. Recovery against the corporate defendant is based on the contract, a copy of which is attached to plaintiff’s petition.

The contract sued on is a common form of agreement quite generally used in the oil industry for drilling oil and gas wells and calls for drilling of a well to a depth sufficient to test the Taneha sand found at a depth of approximately 2,200 feet, unless oil and gas is found in paying quantities at a lesser depth. Plaintiff was required to start drilling within 15 days and to continue the drilling with diligence until the well was completed. He was to be paid $1.65 per each foot drilled, payment to be made immediately upon *345 completion of the well if a-producer or immediately upon plugging if a dry hole.

The contract further provides that if the defendant corporation directed a reduction in the size of the hole at any point above the Taneha sand, it would pay plaintiff $35 per tour of 12 hours for straight reaming the size of the smaller hole to the size of the hole before it was reduced in addition to the $1.65 per foot. It was also agreed that when the top of any probable producing sand was reached, the corporate defendant should take over the well at that time and “superintend and direct the drilling in of said well and shall so supervise said drilling” until it decided to stop or directed plaintiff to drill ahead. All of such work supervised by defendant was to be paid for at the rate of $35 per tour of 12 hours and was to be considered as “day work” and footage so drilled was not to be included in the total footage to be paid for at $1.65 per foot. It also provided that such “day work” should include the completion of the well as a producer and the plugging if a dry hole.

Plaintiff in his petition alleges that he drilled the hole to a depth of 1,993 feet, when on April 18, 1944, he encountered a formation which required shutting down the well, bailing water and waiting for orders and directions from the defendant Oil and Gas Company which assumed direction of the “further process of cleaning and drilling said well”. That plaintiff proceeded under orders and directions to work on said well for additional 180 days. Just what he did is not apparent from the petition, but he says that the 180 days of work was performed under paragraphs 7 and 8 of the contract, paragraph 7 being the paragraph calling for $35 a day in addition to the footage payment for straight reaming of a smaller hole, and paragraph 8 providing for supervised drilling when a probable producing sand had been reached and payment of $35 a day in lieu of the footage payment of $1.65 and covered the completion of the well if a producer and the plugging if a dry hole.

Apparently the work done during the 180-day period resulted in deepening the well from 1,993 feet to 2,110 feet at which point plaintiff lost his tools in the hole. This was 180 days or 6 months after April 18, 1944, or not later than October 18, 1944.

It is then alleged that on November 14, 1945, or more than a year thereafter, by mutual consent of the parties to the contract, the well was abandoned and the hole plugged under the direction of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

Based on these facts, plaintiff sought to recover for 1,993 feet at a $1.65 per foot or $3,288.45 plus 180 days work at $35 per day, or the sum of $6,300, praying judgment for the total sum of $9,-588.45.

To this petition the defendants demurred on the ground, (1) that the petition shows on its face that the alleged cause of action is barred by the statutes of limitations in such cases made and provided; (2) that the petition does not state facts sufficient to justify a cause of action in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendants or any of them.

The demurrer was sustained by the trial court and the plaintiff refusing to plead further, the cause was dismissed.

The cause is here on a transcript of the record.

The only cause of action attempted to be stated against the individual defendants, who were not parties to the contract, is based upon the alleged fact that the plaintiff did not have notice of the dissolution proceedings. These proceedings were had in the district court of Creek county and are made a part of the petition by reference and were obviously before the trial court when he had the demurrer under consideration. They were not shown in the transcript and hence there is no factual basis upon which this court can deter *346 mine the correctness of the trial court’s ruling.

The petition alleges that the corporate defendant did file its petition for dissolution in the district court of Creek county on October 16, 1948, and thereafter the court entered its order of dissolution and distribution of its assets. We think it only reasonable to assume that when the district court of Creek county entered its order of dissolution, it found that all proper notices were given concerning the dissolution as required by. law. It is true plaintiff alleges he had no actual notice of the dissolution proceeding.

We held in Wagner v. Land, 152 Okla. 225, 4 P. 2d 81, that:

“The allegations of a petition must be construed in connection with the exhibits attached and referred to in the petition.”

And in School District No. 60 of Ellis County v. Crabtree, 146 Okla. 197, 294 P. 171, that in case of conflict between the allegations of the petition and the attached exhibit, the provisions of the exhibit governed notwithstanding the allegations of the petition.

Title 18, being the Business Corporation Act of the State of Oklahoma, prescribed a complete method for dissolution of an Oklahoma corporation. Section 1.185 (a) gives jurisdiction to the appropriate district court, and (b), “Such court shall have full authority over the presentation and proof of all claims and demands against the corporation, whether due or not, or not yet due, or contingent, or unliquidated or sounding only in damages, and the barring from participation of creditors and claimants failing to make and present claims and proofs as required by any order.”

It further provides that notice by publication shall be given to creditors directing all creditors and claimants to make and present claims and proof to the persons at the place and within the time limited by order of court and that a copy of such notice shall be mailed within six days after the first publication thereof to each creditor or claimant as shown by the books of the corporation.

Section 1.226 requires the court to make 8 specific findings in its order of dissolution, No.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1952 OK 171, 243 P.2d 701, 206 Okla. 344, 1952 Okla. LEXIS 588, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/turner-v-sooner-oil-gas-co-okla-1952.