Walsh v. Union Oil Co. of California

291 N.E.2d 644, 53 Ill. 2d 295, 1972 Ill. LEXIS 295
Illinois Supreme Court·Decided December 1, 1972·No. 44305·Published·Cited by 19 cases

Opinion

MR. JUSTICE WARD

delivered the opinion of the court:

Ruth T. Walsh, the plaintiff, brought an action in the circuit court of Clay County on December 2, 1965, alleging ownership of certain oil, gas and mineral interests in property in Wayne County which had been leased to the defendant by the plaintiff’s predecessors in title. The complaint claimed the defendant’s failure to pay royalties due the plaintiff for oil produced. A judgment for $15,132.72 was entered for the plaintiff, and the appellate court affirmed, with the exception of a portion of the judgment which is not pertinent here. (131 Ill. App. 2d 1015.) We granted leave to appeal.

The plaintiff’s interest had been obtained through tax deeds issued between December 1960 and August 1965 by the county clerk of Wayne County pursuant to orders entered by the county court and the circuit court of Wayne County. On the basis of records of the defendant the parties stipulated as to the amount of royalties that were owed by the defendant under its leases.

In May 1967 the defendant moved to stay the proceedings on the ground that actions were pending in Wayne County to have certain of the tax deeds, on which the plaintiff was relying in its Clay County action, set aside. In June 1967 petitions to intervene for the purpose of seeking a stay of the proceedings were filed by former owners of certain interests claimed by the plaintiff. The trial court denied the petitions to intervene and the defendant’s motion to stay the proceedings, and on June 8, 1968, entered judgment for the plaintiff.

After the appellate court had affirmed the judgment, the defendant filed a petition for rehearing in which it pointed out that the appellate court in Buschmann v. Walsh, 120 Ill. App. 2d 242, had affirmed the judgment of the circuit court of Wayne County, which had held a tax deed issued to the plaintiff here void, and on which the plaintiff had sought to recover in her action in Clay County. The appellate court’s opinion in Buschmann was filed on February 18, 1970, prior to that court’s affirmance in this case. The plaintiffs in the Buschmann case had brought the action in Wayne County under section 72 of the Civil Practice Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1967, ch. 110, par. 72) to have the tax deed issued to Walsh declared void. The appellate court in denying the petition for rehearing said that its opinion in this case was a review of the propriety of the trial court’s judgment in Clay County entered on July 6, 1968, at which time there was no final judgment in Wayne County holding one of the plaintiff’s tax deeds void. The court said it therefore was not passing on the question of whether the tax deed concerned in the Buschmann case was sufficient to support a money judgment in Clay County for the plaintiff after there had been a final judgment that the deed was void.

One of the defendant’s contentions is that the trial and appellate courts erred in failing to judicially construe the tax deeds issued to the plaintiff, and it alleges that the plaintiff had a lesser interest than she claimed.

We do not find the contention persuasive. The complaint sought recovery of the oil royalties accrued and due the plaintiff. Accrued oil royalties are regarded as personal property. (Ohio Oil Co. v. Wright, 386 Ill. 206.) Following the submission of interrogatories by the plaintiff, the parties stipulated as to the amounts of money attributable to oil runs from the concerned tracts, which stipulation was based on the defendant’s records. Slightly .more than a year after the stipulation had been entered into, and after the taking of evidence in the case, the trial court permitted the defendant to file amended answers to interrogatories and permitted its accountant to testify. His testimony was, and the answers to the interrogatories indicated, that lesser amounts than the defendant had originally calculated were due the plaintiff because, it was said, of an overlooked conflict, apparently due to clerical error, between the tax deed given the plaintiff and the interest held by the plaintiff’s predecessors in title. The defendant, it may be noted, did not introduce evidence of the deeds held by the predecessors in title to prove this conflict.

Too, as the appellate court observed, on cross-examination it was’ disclosed that the amount of money allocated and paid to the plaintiff’s predecessors in interest and the amounts so allocated in reports of the defendant to taxing authorities did not correspond with the new answers to interrogatories that the defendant filed.

The amount of the judgment was in the amount the parties had stipulated to on the basis of records solely within the defendant’s possession. The action was one in personal property, not real property.' The defendant later offered evidence that it had erred in its computations, but the trial court was not obliged to accept the accounting by the defendant which was last filed. The court’s entering its judgment in the amount the parties had stipulated to was not contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence. Schulenburg v. Signatrol, Inc., 37 Ill.2d 352; Myers v. City of Elmhurst, 12 Ill.2d 537; LaSalle National Bank v. County of Cook, 12 Ill.2d 40.

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Walsh v. Union Oil Co. of California, 291 N.E.2d 644, 53 Ill. 2d 295, 1972 Ill. LEXIS 295 (Ill. 1972).

291 N.E.2d 644 (Walsh v. Union Oil Co. of California) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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