Rancho Oil Co. v. Powell

• Decision Date: 10 November 1943
• Docket Number: No. 8121.,8121.
• Citation: 175 S.W.2d 960
• Parties: RANCHO OIL CO. et al. v. POWELL et al.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

175 S.W.2d 960

RANCHO OIL CO. et al. v. POWELL et al.

No. 8121.

Supreme Court of Texas.

November 10, 1943.

Rehearing Denied December 22, 1943.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals of Sixth Supreme Judicial District.

Suit by Allen Powell and others against Rancho Oil Company and others. Judgment for defendants was affirmed in part and reversed in part by Court of Civil Appeals, 170 S.W.2d 273, and the defendants bring error.

Judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals affirmed.

Thompson, Walker, Smith & Shannon, of Fort Worth, for plaintiffs in error Oil Co. and Josey.

Weeks, Hankerson & Surles, of Tyler, for plaintiffs in error Lee and Jackson.

Jack Price, of Longview, for plaintiff in error Snaveley.

Park & Park, of Corpus Christi, for plaintiff in error Park.

Bramlette, Levy & Bolton, of Longview, for plaintiffs in error Nislar and Cone.

McCraw & Holt and W. J. Holt, all of Dallas, J. A. Stanford, C. M. Kennedy, Ireland Graves, and Black Graves, & Stayton, all of Austin, for defendants in error.

HICKMAN, Commissioner.

This suit was filed by respondent, Allen Powell, to recover an undivided one-half interest in two contiguous tracts of land aggregating between ten and eleven acres situated in Gladewater, Gregg County, and for an accounting for the oil and gas produced therefrom. Ida Johnson and husband, Alex Johnson, their oil and gas lessees, their grantees of mineral interests subject to the leases, herein called royalty owners, and claimants of surface rights under grants from them were named as defendants.

The material facts are in the main uncontroverted. The land was formerly community property of Doc Powell and his wife (Ida Powell, now Ida Johnson). It was deeded to Doc Powell in 1917 and was thereafter used by him and his wife, Ida, as their homestead until his death in 1918, intestate. Doc Powell was survived by his wife (now Ida Johnson) and respondent, Allen Powell, a son by a former marriage. As the only child of Doc Powell, respondent, Allen Powell, inherited from him an undivided one-half interest in land, burdened only with the homestead rights of his stepmother. After the death of Doc Powell respondent left Texas and continued to live in other states of the Union and in cities in Texas other than Gladewater until shortly before the filing of this suit, during which time he received no information concerning his stepmother or the land. In 1920 Ida Powell married Alex Johnson and moved to a small tract of land owned by him about three miles distant from Gladewater in Upshur County where they continued to live as husband and wife until July, 1931, when they moved upon the tract in controversy, since which time they have continuously occupied it as their home. On January 2, 1931, Ida Johnson, joined by her husband, Alex, executed an oil and gas lease to G. C. Dunaway purporting to cover the entire mineral interest in the land. The lease contained the usual terms of such instruments and reserved a one-eighth royalty. Petitioners, Rancho Oil Company and R. A. Josey, Inc., are the assignees of the lease as to a portion of said land and T. W. Lee as to the remainder. After the execution of the lease the Johnsons executed deeds to a number of persons separately conveying undivided royalty interests and certain owners of those interests are also petitioners.

In answer to special issues the jury found in favor of the lessees and also in favor of the royalty owners on the issue of limitation under the five-year statute, Art. 5509. The judgment rendered by the trial court is thus described in the opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals : "Before rendition of the judgment, appellant [Allen Powell] and defendants Ida and Alex Johnson and all the defendants that claim only surface rights under Ida, and three of the defendants who claimed certain undivided interests in the 1/8 royalty under deeds from Ida, executed and filed an agreement settling the matters as between them. The agreement was approved by the court and incorporated in the judgment. After overruling appellant's motion for judgment notwithstanding the findings of the jury, the court rendered judgment based upon the verdict of the jury sustaining the pleas of limitation under the 5-year statute in favor of the lessees, T. W. Lee, Rancho Oil Company and R. A. Josey, Inc., as to the 7/8 leasehold interest, and in favor of J. C. and J. P. Jackson and J. F. Park as to the respective undivided interests claimed by them in what for convenience may be here termed the `second' 1/2 of the 1/8 royalty sold by Ida. Upon the facts the court entered judgment in favor of all the defendants claiming undivided interests in the `first' 1/2 of the 1/8 royalty sold by Ida."

Another provision of the trial court's judgment was as follows:

"It further appearing to the Court that plaintiff and the defendants other than those mentioned in the hereinabove set out settlement agreement agreed in open court that it would not be necessary to present evidence on the question of improvements in good faith, oil runs, and the accounting features to the jury, but that said matters could be presented to the Trial Judge in the event the Trial Court or Appellate Courts rendered judgment in favor of the plaintiff:

"It is therefore ordered that said stipulation be and the same is hereby approved and made a part of this judgment."

The Court of Civil Appeals reversed the judgment of the trial court in so far as same ran in favor of the lessees and of the claimants of royalty interests in the "second 1/2 of the royalty" and rendered judgment in favor of respondent, Allen Powell. The trial court's judgment in favor of the claimants of the "first 1/2 of the royalty" was affirmed, 170 S.W.2d 273. The term "first 1/2 of the royalty" was used by the court to denote the 1/2 which Ida Johnson sold first. She owned that interest and had the legal right to convey same. The term "second 1/2 of the royalty" was used to denote the remaining 1/2 thereof owned by Allen Powell, a part of which Ida Johnson undertook to convey.

The respondent, Allen Powell, who was appellant in the Court of Civil Appeals, urged in that court two principal grounds for reversal of the trial court's judgment. One ground was that Ida Powell, upon the death of her husband, Doc Powell, remained in possession of the property under her homestead rights therein, and that after she married Alex Johnson the two tracts of land, the one owned by her and the one owned by him, aggregating together less than 200 acres, each of which had theretofore been impressed with the homestead character, comprised their homestead. It was further argued that from this it followed that Ida Johnson's relation to the land is similar to that of a life tenant and respondent's relation that of a remainderman, against whom limitation will not run in favor of such life tenant or those claiming under her during her lifetime. This ground was not sustained by the Court of Civil Appeals. Another ground was that, if Ida Johnson had abandoned her homestead rights in the property, then upon such abandonment she and respondent became tenants in common, each owning a 1/2 undivided interest therein, and that the facts did not raise the issue of limitation as applicable to persons in that relationship. This latter ground was sustained by the Court of Civil Appeals and its judgment reversing the trial court's judgment in the main and rendering the cause was based thereon. It is our conclusion that the Court of Civil Appeals should have sustained the first ground and this opinion will be conconfined to a discussion of that question. The limitation question, as applicable to tenants in common, will not be reached and we shall express no opinion thereon, for, in our view of the evidence, respondent is, in effect, a remainderman.

It is pointed out that respondent did not file a motion for rehearing in the Court of Civil Appeals challenging its ruling on the homestead question. That was wholly unnecessary. That court having rendered judgment in his favor, there was no occasion for his filing a motion for rehearing therein. He was satisfied with the judgment and desired no rehearing. Were he seeking to have us reverse that judgment, a different question would be presented, but, since he is seeking only to uphold it, we are authorized to consider every ground properly assigned in that court for the purpose of determining whether an affirmance should be ordered. This follows from the application of the rule that, if that court's judgment is correct, it should be affirmed....