Yates v. Grayburg Oil Co.

38 S.W.2d 414, 1931 Tex. App. LEXIS 418
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedApril 15, 1931
DocketNo. 7575.
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 38 S.W.2d 414 (Yates v. Grayburg Oil Co.) 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
Yates v. Grayburg Oil Co., 38 S.W.2d 414, 1931 Tex. App. LEXIS 418 (Tex. Ct. App. 1931).

Opinion

BAUGH, J.

Suit by appellant against appellee, a private corporation, for alleged breach of written contract, to declare forfeiture thereunder, for injunction, for appointment of a receiver, and for damages. Appellee filed its plea of privilege to be sued in Bexar county, the place of its residence, which appellant controverted, and, after a hearing thereon, its plea was sustained, from which order Yates has appealed.

Venue in Tom Green county was asserted under subdivision 5 of article 1995, R. S., based upon a written contract performable there, and under subdivision 23 giving venue against a private corporation in any county where the cause of action or a part thereof ' arose. It appears: That I. G. Yates owned two sections of land bordering upon the west side of the Pecos river in Pecos county. • That the appellee owned and operated in June, 1929, under a lease from the state of Texas six oil wells in the Pecos river bed adjacent to said lands, and in addition thereto was “picking up,” by ditches dug for that purpose, seepage oil from said lands which would otherwise have escaped into said river. The contract in question was dated June 8, .1929, ran from June 1,1929, to May 31,1930, and granted to appelleé, among other things, the right to use surface sites on said lands for the purpose of operating its river bed lease, pumping, treating, storing, etc., the oil therefrom, including-tanks, camp sites, etc.,^ necessary for that purpose; and permission to reclaim or pick up all such seepage oil and to dig necessary ditches for that purpose.

In addition to other considerations recited, said contract provided that appellee, designated as licensee, “⅜ * * contracts, binds and obligates itself to pay to the licensor at his office in San Angelo, Tom Green County, Texas, twice monthly one-eighth (⅜) of all the seepage oil picked up and run as aforesaid and it will on the 15th day of June, 1929, render' *415 an accurate account to licensor at his said office of all the seepage oil picked up and run as aforesaid from June 1st to June 15th, 1929, and likewise on the 1st and 15th days of July, 1929, and the 1st and 15th days* of each succeeding month thereafter during the continuation of this contract it will render an accurate account to licensor of all the seepage oil picked up and run as aforesaid from the date of the preceding accounting, and will with ■ each accounting pay to licensor at his office aforesaid the one-eighth (⅛) part thereof according to the daily posted price of oil run from the Yates field, and in the event it from any cause fails, refuses or neglects to make such accounting and promptly pay to licensor at his office aforesaid within three (3) days after each accounting period aforesaid the amounts due to him, then the license hereby granted shall be thereby forfeited and licen-sor shall have the right to sue for and recover any sums due and owing as aforesaid with interest at ten per cent per annum from the date the same has accrued as aforesaid with ten per cent additional as attorneys’ fees.

“And it is further expressly agreed that should licensee refuse, fail or neglect to faithfully keep and perform any other covenant, agreement or condition of this license contract, this contract shall thereby bo forfeited and licensee agrees that it will without question remove all its machinery from the land of the licensor, and failing to remove its said properties within -ten (10) days after any default in payment or non-compliance as aforesaid, then said machinery and properties shall be forfeited to and become the property of the licensor and he shall have the right by himself or through his agent or representative to take possession of all properties, machinery and other things of the licensee on said land and remove the same therefrom and sell and dispose of it and hold and keep the proceeds thereof. * * * ”

The other provisions of said lease are not pertinent-to the issues raised.

On June 9, 1930, appellant notified appellee that the April and May royalty remittances had not been made. Appellee thereupon made remittance for April, but not for May. On July 2, 1930, the attorney for Mr. Yates wrote appellee that its contract had expired by its terms on May 31, 1930; that it had not paid its royalties on seepage oil which wore due on May 1st and 15th; that it had not complied with its contract so as to extend such license for another year; and “as the records now stand here the license contract is terminated and the properties placed by you on the lands forfeited to Mr. Yates.” On July 24,1930, ap-pellee tendered to appellant full payment for his one-eighth of the seepage oil recovered by it during the month of May, which appellant then refused and continued to refuse to accept. Subsequent correspondence introduced indicates that such refusal to accept was because appellant was then asserting other ¡rights under the forfeiture clause of the contract, claimed by him to have accrued from appellant’s failure to pay the royalties as provided, in addition to the payment of the money for May, and was demanding of appellant the surrender of his lands and of its equipment situated thereon. No tender in this respect was shown to have been made by ap-pellee, only a tender of the royalty for the seepage oil. On August 5,1930, appellant’s attorney demanded of appellee in writing payment of May royalties, interest and attorneys’ fees, that appellee vacate his property and surrender to him possession of its equipment located thereon. Upon being informed that appellee was preparing to remove said equipment from his premises, appellant filed this suit on August 9th, seeking the.relief above indicated.

Appellee bound itself in writing to perform a part of its contract in Tom Green county. It is not controverted that it failed to do so in accordance with the express terms thereof. Appellee insists, however, and such was doubtless the view of the trial court, that upon its tender to appellant on July 24, 1939, before this suit was filed, of the sums due on May 1st and 15th, respectively, the only portion of the contract performable in Tom Green county, or which appellant could enforce in Tom Green county, was thereby extinguished, and 'that the district court thereby lost venue of the suit as to any and all other provisions of said contract, because they were not performable in Tom Green county, and that to permit appellant to refuse the tender made and thus sustain venue on the rest of his suit in Tom Green county would amount to a fraud upon the jurisdiction of that court.

There seems to be no controversy over the facts. Clearly the appellee breached its written contract with reference to payments in Tom Green county. If no tender of that payment prior to filing of said suit had been made, unquestionably, venue would have been properly laid in Tom Green county. Did such tender, under the facts and circumstances above outlined, deprive appellant of the right to litigate in said county the other claims asserted by him under his contract? We think not.

Two things are obvious we think from the provisions of the contract. One is that, because of its dependent provisions, its subject-matter, and the parties thereto, it was not a divisible contract. The second is that the parties have in express terms made the time of the payments due thereunder of the essence of the contract; and appellee, upon its failure to make such' payments within the times specified ■ expressly vested in appellant, by such default, specific additional rights of forfeiture therein named.

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Bluebook (online)
38 S.W.2d 414, 1931 Tex. App. LEXIS 418, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/yates-v-grayburg-oil-co-texapp-1931.