Warner v. Coleman

1924 OK 56, 231 P. 1055, 107 Okla. 292, 1924 Okla. LEXIS 690
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedJanuary 15, 1924
Docket12115
StatusPublished
Cited by37 cases

This text of 1924 OK 56 (Warner v. Coleman) 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
Warner v. Coleman, 1924 OK 56, 231 P. 1055, 107 Okla. 292, 1924 Okla. LEXIS 690 (Okla. 1924).

Opinion

BRANSON, J.

This action was begun in the district court of Ottawa county in the year 1936. Minnie Newman Warner and C. T. Warner, plaintiffs in error herein, were the plaintiffs in the district court, and the defendants in error, G. L. Coleman, A. E. Coleman, J. F. Robinson, C. M. Harvey, individually and as copartners, and Commerce Mining & Royalty Company, trustees for said G. L. Coleman, A. E. Coleman, ,T. F. Robinson, and C. M. Harvey, and Lennan Lead & Zinc Company, a corporation, were -the defendants in the district court. The parties will be referred to as they appeared in the court below.

The plaintiffs filed their petition, to which a demurrer was sustained, an amended petition, to which a demurrer was sustained, and a second amended petition, to which a demurrer was sustained, but a new trial was granted and the second amended petition was further amended, to which second amended petition, as amended, the demurrer was overruled. The cause came on for trial, and the trial court sustained a demurrer to the evidence of the plaintiffs, dismissing their petition, and from this order and the order overruling their motion for a new trial, the plaintiffs appeal. The second amended petition, as amended, is so voluminous it is wholly impracticable to give more than a synopsis of the allegations thereof.

The petition alleges in effect that the plaintiff. Minnie Newman Warner, a citizen of the Quapaw Tndian Tribe, was allotted and patented, several years prior to the facts out of which this controversy arose, approximately 199 acres of land, by reason of her citizenship in said tribe. It lay in a rectangular shape, in the northwest part of section 6. In 1907, a mining lease on the said allotment of the said plaintiff was purchased by and tor-tile individual defendants, and • thereafter until April, 1911. they caused some prospecting to he done upon a certain portion of said allotment for load and zinc ore. In 1910. the plaintiff, joined by her husband and coplaintiff, O. T. Warner, sold to one -Frank Warner 15 acres of the said allotment, which was at the time subject to the mining lease, supra. In 1911, said plaintiffs allege that the lessees began negotiating with plaintiffs t-: purchase the; fee title to 59 acres of the said allotment, rei<-reseuting to the plaintiffs that they had not discovered any lead or zinc ore on said land, and that said land was not of any mineral value, and concealing from the plaintiffs that said land was rich in mineral value, in order that they might fraudulently induce the plaintiffs to sell the land to them at its farm value; that the plaintiffs were uneducated and wholly without any knowledge of prospecting, drilling, or developing of said land, and the discovery of lead and zinc ore thereon, and had no experience and no opportunity to know what mineral wealth had been discovered by the holes drilled on said land, and that they relied upon the said statements of the defendants, which were fraudulent: that the plaintiffs saw an immense mill being erected on the land so sold, very soon after it was purchased by the defendants, which mill was for (he purpose of concentrating lead and zinc ore. but they still had confidence in the representations of defendant Robinson, with whom they negotiated the sale: hut later, upon investigation, had found that by said falsehood, fraud, and deceit of the said defendant Robinson they had been swindled out of an immense fortune and tliat his pretended friendship for them was merely to gain their confidence to set them under his control, and thus swindle .them out of this valuable tract of mineral .land. That on investigation they found that the drilled holes disclosed what subsequent development proved, that the land was very rich in lead and zinc ore deposits, and this fact they discovered in the early part of 1915. That the drill logs, which were not shown to plaintiffs, disclosed that the holes drilled on the land by the said defendants showed that the mineral deposits in said-land were immensely valuable; that said fraudulent, representations of the defendant Robinson, and his failure to disclose what the logs showed, operated to induce the plaintiffs to convey 59 acres of said land to the defendant Robinson and his copartners for the sum of $8,500, and that within two years after the plaintiffs discovered this fraud had been perpetrated upon them, they commenced this action.

The petition further alleged, in substance, that soon after the sale of the said 59 acres, the said defendants leased said land to defendant Lennan Lead & Zinc Company for a bonus consideration of $10,000 and 25 per cent, royalty: that plaintiffs ratified and confirmed the lease to the Len-nan Lead & Zinc Company, made by defendants, not having any desire to disturb its possession and use of the same *294 for mining purposes, but seek a rescission of the deed made in 1911 to the said individual defendants on the ground of fraud; the prayer of the petition being, not only for rescission of the conveyance, but entire possession of the property against each and all of the defendants.

The plaintiffs’ petition, after setting out the alleged representations which plaintiffs say were fraudulent, and the alleged teuid-ulent concealment by the defendant Robinson of the discovery of the mineral deposits, which they actually discovered upon certain portions of the land, prays judgment in the sum of $200,000 against the defendants G. L. Coleman, A. E. Coleman, J. F. Robinson, and C. M. Harvey and the Commerce Mining & Royalty Company, which prayer recites, in substance, that the said defendants have received and collected said amount in the form of royalties from mining operations thereon; and prayed, further, damages at the rate of $5,000 per week for ore being taken from the ground, and—

“That this court by its order find, decree and declare that the said warranty deed — made, executed and delivered by the plaintiffs to the individual defendants was procured by fraud and misrepresentation and declare the said deed null and void and of no effect and order it canceled of record, and the said land reconveyed to the plaintiffs, and for the possession of said land, and for rents and profits sub-\et to the mining lease made, executed and delivered by the said defendants to Temple Chapman and T. L. Lennan, and by them assigned to the Chapman, Lennan Lead & Zinc Company, now the Lennan Lead & Zinc Company, and that the plaintiffs be subrogated to the rights of the defendants, the.lessors m the said lease, and for the cost and disbursements of this suit, together with such other and further and additional relief, as in the good conscience of this court, he shall deem expedient, fit and just.”

There is found in the petition of the plaintiffs no allegation of fact, in substance or effect, or by way of conclusion of law, that plaintiffs are -enti.tled to the immediate exclusive possession of the land. The petition refers to two exhibits, one of which is a lease contract executed by the plaintiffs with the defendant Robinson, under which he and his copartners were given the right to the possession of the property in question for the purpose of prospecting thereon for mineral deposits, and it was under this lease contract, that the shafts were sunk, between 1907 and the date of the deed, May 13, 1011.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1924 OK 56, 231 P. 1055, 107 Okla. 292, 1924 Okla. LEXIS 690, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/warner-v-coleman-okla-1924.