Gabbert v. William Seymour Edwards Oil Co

Citation86 S.E. 671,76 Ga.App. 718
CourtSupreme Court of West Virginia
Decision Date05 October 1915
PartiesGABBERT et al. v. WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS OIL CO.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to Circuit Court, Kanawha County.

Action by Charles Gabbert and others against the William Seymour Edwards Oil Company. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiffs bring error. Affirmed.

Littlepage, Matheny & Littlepage, for plaintiffs in error.

Payne, Minor & Bouchelle, of Charleston, for defendant in error.

ROBINSON, P. The plaintiff in this action in assumpsit seeks to recover the sum of five hundred dollars which he claims is due him under the stipulations of an oil and gas lease. Recovery was denied him by the judgment of the circuit court.

The lease is the usual one, except that a special provision was inserted into the printed form by typewriting. That provision is as follows:

"Lessee is to begin operation in forty days and pursue same diligently till completed or pay to lessor the sum of five hundred dollars."

Decision turns on the question whether this inserted provision controls the printed provision left in the lease, as following the inserted one, that the lessee should have the right at any time to surrender the lease. This surrender provision is as follows:

"It is further agreed, that the lessee shall have the right at any time to surrender this lease, whereupon this lease shall be null and void and the payments which have been made shall be the full stipulated damages for the non-fulfillment of the foregoing deed."

It is perhaps well to state that fifty-eight dollars was paid in cash as a consideration for the lease, and after the first three monthsfifty-eight dollars was to be paid, each quarter in advance, by the lessee to the lessor, as delay or commutation money.

The facts are conceded. The lessee did not begin operation in forty days, but on the thirty-ninth day tendered in regular form a surrender of the lease, with one dollar as a consideration therefor, and a release of the premises from the binding effect of the deed. In other words, the lessee fully surrendered, if it could do so under a proper construction of the terms of the contract. The plaintiff, however, insists that the inserted typewritten provision controlled and abrogated the surrender provision, and that he is entitled to the five hundred dollars, for which he as lessor has sued the lessee by this action. He has sought to rely on some parol evidence explaining his purpose in inserting the typewritten provision; but the same is certainly incompetent and immaterial. The two provisions are not inconsistent They make no repugnance or ambiguity. Not what the parties intended aside from the terms of the lease, but what they have expressed as intention by the language of the lease must control its interpretation.

Though the parties stipulated that the lessor was to be paid five hundred dollars in the event operation was not...

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8 cases
  • Marson Coal Co., Inc. v. Insurance Co. of State of Pa.
    • United States
    • West Virginia Supreme Court
    • October 29, 1974
    ... ... Marson, III, and the sole passenger, William R. McCutcheon ...         The insurance company denied coverage ... See, Gabbert" v. William Seymour Edwards Oil Co., 76 W.Va. 718, 86 S.E. 671 (1916) ... \xC2" ... ...
  • Antero Res. Corp. v. Directional One Servs. Inc. USA
    • United States
    • West Virginia Supreme Court
    • April 8, 2022
    ...it being presumed that the contract contains no provisions or clauses not intended by the parties." Gabbert v. William Seymour Edwards Oil Co. , 76 W. Va. 718, ––––, 86 S.E. 671, 672 (1915).The circuit court found that the unambiguous language of the MSA required Antero to pay Directional O......
  • Weil v. Black
    • United States
    • West Virginia Supreme Court
    • October 5, 1915
  • Coffey v. DAY & NIGHT NAT. BANK
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Kentucky
    • December 7, 1926
    ...contract, and is, at the same time, consistent with law and with the intention of the parties." It is presented thus in Gabbert v. Oil Co., 76 W. Va. 718, 86 S. E. 671: "In the interpretation of a contract, partly printed and partly written or typewritten, as in the use of a printed form, t......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

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