Doyle v. Stanolind Oil & Gas Co.

• Decision Date: 12 January 1942
• Docket Number: No. 10045.,10045.
• Citation: 123 F.2d 900
• Parties: DOYLE et al. v. STANOLIND OIL & GAS CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

123 F.2d 900 (1941)

DOYLE et al. v. STANOLIND OIL & GAS CO. et al.

No. 10045.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

November 29, 1941.

Rehearing Denied January 12, 1942.

Sol Goodell, of Dallas, Tex., for appellants.

Frank J. Scurlock and Snowden M. Leftwich, both of Dallas, Tex., for appellees.

Before HUTCHESON and McCORD, Circuit Judges, and DAWKINS, District Judge.

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge.

The suit was for the title and possession of a tract of 2.71 acres of land, described, in the petition, by metes and bounds, and, as bisected by the common boundary line between two adjoining tracts, one owned by one of the plaintiffs, the other by the other two. There was a motion to dismiss, a plea of mis-joinder of parties-plaintiffs, because the petition showed not joint but several ownerships, and a motion for more definite statement or for bill of particulars. These, overruled, there was an answer and cross action in effect denying plaintiffs', and asserting defendants' title. Plaintiffs thereupon moved for summary judgment on the basis of an oil and gas lease,¹ dated April 28, 1930, from Arthur Christian to B. A. Skipper, under which both plaintiffs and defendants hold, a deed from Arthur Christian to Earl Christian,² a contract,³ and five assignments,⁴ executed by Frank R. Foster, plaintiffs' decedent, a release⁵ executed by plaintiff, an affidavit⁶ of a surveyor, that the area calculated according to the metes and bounds description used in the Arthur Christian lease, was 104.95 acres, and that deducting the Earl Christian 25 acres, there would be left in the lease, when Foster made his conveyances, 79.94 acres, the fact that Foster during his life time had never, and his widow had not until in 1940, claimed that he had left a strip or gore between the North 20 and the North 31 of the South 62 acre tracts and that plaintiffs have gone upon and developed the two tracts for oil as adjoining owners. Their contention was, that the instruments Foster executed, including those under which plaintiffs claim, show that he intended to and did assign all of his right, title and interest in and to the Christian lease hold estate, and that instead of being separated by a narrow gore or strip, the tracts owned by plaintiffs adjoin.

The only attempted controversion of these instruments, the affidavit and these facts, by defendants, was the filing of a surveyor's affidavit which stated; that the Christian lease, by actual survey on the ground contained, not 104.95 acres as plaintiffs' surveyor had computed it from its field notes, nor 107 acres as it recites was found by a recent survey, but 109.71 acres; that deducting from this amount, the 25 acre Earl Christian tract, leaves 84.71 acres; that when the two 31 acre and the 20 acre tracts assigned by Foster are deducted from this, there remains unconveyed, 2.71 acres; and that it is impossible to compute the actual area of a tract from the field notes of the instrument as plaintiffs' surveyor has done, without an actual survey on the ground.

Submitted on the motion for summary judgment there was a judgment for plaintiffs. Appellants here insist, first, that it was error to overrule their motion for misjoinder of parties, in that the pleading showed not that plaintiffs were jointly interested in the land sued for, but that each claimed an entirely different and segregated part, one the North, the other, the South, half of it. On the merits they urge that the surveyor's affidavit filed by defendants showing that after assigning the two 31 acre tracts and the 20 acre tract out of the Christian lease, there remained unassigned and belonging to Foster a tract of 2.71 acres lying between the 20 and the North 31 acre tracts, and plaintiffs not having contraverted this affidavit, defendants, not plaintiffs, should have had judgment, or at least the motion for summary judgment should have been denied and the cause set down for trial on the merits.

Appellees insist that the issue of mis-joinder is determined against appellants by Rule 20(a), Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c.⁷ On the merits they urge that the affidavit of plaintiffs' surveyor raised no material issue of fact, because the controlling question in the construction of the instruments in question is not the number of acres actually included in the boundaries of the Christian lease, but the number of acres Foster, as assignor, thought were included in it. They insist that the instruments as a whole, in the light of the recitations in the assignments he made, that the tract had been recently surveyed and found to contain 107 acres; of the fact that the assignments and the contract under which part of them were made were substantially contemporaneous; and the fact that for years during which plaintiffs have developed the land for oil as adjoiners, neither Foster nor appellees have claimed the existence of a strip or gore between them; furnish indisputable evidence of an intent on the part of Foster to pass all of his interests in the lease, and not as is now belatedly claimed, to reserve as a nuisance and menace to his grantees, a small narrow strip between the North and South tracts.

We agree with appellees. The question of joinder is purely one of procedure and is controlled by the federal rules. The Texas authorities appellants cite are without application. Rule 20(a) Permissive Joinder, in the largeness and comprehensiveness of its terms is peculiarly applicable here. Plaintiffs here, in the very terms of the rule, assert right to relief jointly and severally, or in the alternative, in respect of a series of transactions or occurrences and questions of law and of fact common to all of them arise in the action. It would be difficult to imagine a more apposite case.

On the merits, the case is ruled by Texas decisions which have long established that in determining the scope and effect of a conveyance, there are no artificially controlling rules. The settled law here is that the intention of the parties as derived from the instruments, in the light of the circumstances under which they were executed and acted upon, is controlling and a presumption arises against the retention of gores or strips between tracts of land sold as a part of, and in the process of disposing of, a larger tract. If the assignment of the North 20 acres had contained a call for the South 62 acres or the assignment of its North 31 acres had called for the North 20 acres, it would of course be readily admitted that there was no intention to split them apart.

Appellants' whole case is based upon the contention that in the absence of such a joining call, the only way the 20 acres can be laid off is by fixing its North line coincident with the North line of the lease and its South line at a point which would give 20 acres, neither more nor less. If the assignment to the 20 acres stood alone, if it were the only fact in the case, appellant would undoubtedly be right. But it by no means stands alone. It stands as one of a series of conveyances made at substantially the same time for the purpose of dividing the...