Morris v. Merchant, No. 8068

• Docket Nº: No. 8068
• Citation: 1967 NMSC 26, 77 N.M. 411, 423 P.2d 606
• Case Date: February 06, 1967
• Court: Supreme Court of New Mexico

Page 606

423 P.2d 606 77 N.M. 411 Lee Ellen Coleman MORRIS et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
Mary Frances MERCHANT, June J. Kugeler, Gulf Oil
Corporation, a corporation, Dorothy Swigart Carlson, Oscar
W. Carlson, Marion Tracy Lelevier, John R. Joyce II,
Elizabeth P. Joyce, Bruce D. Pardue, Executor of the Estate
of C. P. Pardue, Deceased, and Mattie E. Pardue,
Defendants-Appellees. No. 8068. Supreme Court of New Mexico. Feb. 6, 1967.

[77 NM 412] James L. Dow, Carlsbad, for appellants.

Stagner, Sage, Walker & Estill, Carlsbad, for Dorothy Swigart Carlson, Oscar W. Carlson, John R. Joyce II, Elizabeth P. Joyce, Bruce D. Pardue, executor of estate of C. P. Pardue, deceased, and Mattie E. Pardue.

McCormick, Lusk, Paine & Feezer, Carlsbad, for Mary Frances Merchant and June J. Kugeler.

[77 NM 413] OPINION

OMAN, Judge, Court of Appeals.

On October 2, 1963, plaintiffs-appellants filed suit to quiet their claimed title to the mineral interests in separately-described tracts of land. At the time of trial they discovered, apparently for the first time, that the language of the instrument, under which they claimed a reservation in their predecessors in title of the mineral interests

Page 607

in the seventy acres involved in this appeal, in fact failed to reserve such mineral interests in their predecessors.

This instrument was a deed dated February 10, 1916, and was recorded on February 15, 1916. The appellants' predecessors in title were the grantors and the deed contained the following clause:

'* * * It is expressly understood that grantee retain all mineral and mineral right in and to said land conveyed by this deed, with the right of egress and ingress to prospect for all mineral and oil and develop mines and wells.'

There is no evidence that appellants, or their predecessors in title, at any time ever entered onto the premises for any purposes after February 10, 1916, and it was stipulated that no oil or gas wells had been drilled on the premises.

Appellants filed a motion for leave to amend their complaint, so as to add a count for reformation of the deed. Leave was granted, and they filed an amended complaint whereby they asserted the word 'grantee' was mistakenly inserted in the above-quoted clause in the deed, '* * * when in truth and in fact the parties mutually intended to insert the word 'grantor,' * * *'

The appellees also asked leave to amend their respective answers and include the affirmative defense of res judicata, which defense they predicated upon a claim that a judgment had been entered on November 3, 1950, in a prior quiet title suit in which appellants had been joined as parties defendant as 'unknown claimants of interest in the premises adverse to the plaintiff.' The plaintiff in that prior suit was one of the defendants-appellees in this suit, and the same seventy acres of land were involved in both suits. The court granted the request.

The court entered a final decree in the present suit adjudging appellants to be the owners in fee simple of the oil, gas and other minerals lying in and under all the lands described in their complaint, except for the seventy acres here involved and in which the appellees claimed the entire fee simple estate, including the minerals. As to these seventy acres, the court adjudged and decreed that appellants' complaint should be dismissed. It is this portion of the court's final decree which is before us on appeal.

[77 NM 414] Appellants' points relied upon for reversal, which are five in number, are all directed at claimed error in the court's findings and conclusions that appellants were guilty of laches and were barred from asserting any title to the mineral interests in question by reason of the decree in the prior quiet title suit. The matters of laches and res judicata are affirmative defenses. Rule 8(c), Rules of Civil Procedure for the district courts of the State of New Mexico. However, before the effects of the affirmative defenses need be considered, appellants first had to establish their right to the relief they sought, absent these defenses.

A judgment, which can properly be sustained on correct legal principles under the pleadings and the evidence, will be affirmed, even though the trial court may have based the decision in whole or in part upon other principles. Atma v. Munoz, 48 N.M. 114, 146 P.2d 631; Heron v. Garcia, 48 N.M. 507, 153 P.2d 514; Flanagan v....