Roberts v. Unimin Corp.

• Decision Date: 28 February 2018
• Docket Number: No. 16-4172,16-4172
• Parties: Kathy ROBERTS; Karen McShane, Plaintiffs–Appellants v. UNIMIN CORPORATION, Defendant–Appellee
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

883 F.3d 1015

Kathy ROBERTS; Karen McShane, Plaintiffs–Appellants
v.
UNIMIN CORPORATION, Defendant–Appellee

No. 16-4172

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: December 12, 2017
Filed: February 28, 2018

Benjamin R. Askew, Kevin M. Carnie, Jr., John G. Simon, THE SIMON LAW FIRM, Saint Louis, MO, for Plaintiffs–Appellants.

Barrett S. Moore, Robert D. Stroud, BLAIR & STROUD, Batesville, AR, for Defendant–Appellee.

Before SMITH, Chief Judge, ARNOLD and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

883 F.3d 1016

For the past century, the Williamson family has leased out a plot of Arkansas land for silica mining. The current lease, signed in 1961, provides for a term of years until 2007 and continuing "as long thereafter as" certain activities occur on the property. In 2015, Kathy Roberts and Karen McShane (both née Williamson), the present lessors, sought a declaratory judgment against Unimin Corporation, the present lessee, that the lease created a tenancy at will. The lessors claimed further that the lease was unconscionable and that Unimin had unjustly enriched itself by refusing to vacate the land when they demanded possession. After the close of discovery, the lessors dismissed their unconscionability claim with prejudice. The district court¹ granted summary judgment to Unimin on the remaining claims, ruling that the lease had created a determinable leasehold, not a tenancy at will, and so Unimin did not unjustly enrich itself by staying in possession. The lessors appeal from that judgment, and we affirm.

We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, keeping in mind that summary judgment is appropriate if there is no genuine dispute of material fact and, viewing the record in a light most favorable to the lessors, Unimin is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Smith v. Arrington Oil & Gas, Inc. , 664 F.3d 1208, 1212 (8th Cir. 2012). We also review the district court's construction of the lease and its interpretation of state law de novo. Id. The parties to this diversity action agree that Arkansas law governs. See id .

On appeal, the lessors challenge only the district court's ruling that the lease created a determinable leasehold and not a tenancy at will. The lease provides that the leasehold will endure as long as "siliceous materials" are "shipped" from the lessee's mill and at least one of the following activities also takes place on the land: "mining," "mining operations," or "transport[ing]" siliceous materials. The lessors contend that the term of the lease is indefinite and thus terminable at will since it may never end of its own accord: Unimin could, in theory, ship siliceous materials from its mill and conduct mining operations on the land forever. No one disputes that the lease did not create a perpetual leasehold. See Pults v. City of Springdale , 23 Ark.App. 182, 745 S.W.2d 144, 146–47 (1988). But if the lease is not perpetual and lacks a predetermined end date, the lessors reason, then it must have created a mere tenancy at will. The difficulty with that logic, as the district court pointed out, is that it misconstrues the type of indefiniteness that creates a tenancy at will, while ignoring an entire category of property interests under Arkansas law—determinable estates.

883 F.3d 1017

Arkansas law is clear that a tenancy at will exists when a lease "is silent as to its duration," see Cottrell v. Cottrell , 332 Ark. 352, 965 S.W.2d 129, 130 (1998), or does not otherwise grant land to the lessee "for any definite time." See Ritter v. Thompson , 102 Ark. 442, 144 S.W. 910, 911 (1912). The lease at issue here, by contrast, leases the property for as long as certain activities occur on it. By specifying that the lessee may stay in possession until those activities cease, the lease created...