Sun Oil Co. v. Guidry

• Decision Date: 23 December 1957
• Docket Number: No. 4526,4526
• Citation: 99 So.2d 424
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US
• Parties: SUN OIL COMPANY et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Frank A. GUIDRY et al., Defendants-Appellees-Appellants.

Page 424

99 So.2d 424

SUN OIL COMPANY et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Frank A. GUIDRY et al., Defendants-Appellees-Appellants.

No. 4526.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, First Circuit.

Dec. 23, 1957.

H. Garland Pavy, Opelousas, for appellants.

Chas. F. Boagni, Jr., Opelousas, for appellees.

TATE, Judge.

Plaintiffs filed this concursus proceeding under LSA-R.S. 13:4811--4827, depositing into court the proceeds representing the proportionate share of the mineral production appertaining to a 1/1280th royalty interest in certain St. Landry Parish property.

The rival claimants to ownership of this royalty interest are: the Guidrys, appellees, the owners of the surface title to the property; and Hubert B. Thornton, appellant, claimant by reason of a mineral royalty deed dated March 18, 1936, an interest derived from which was subsequently inherited by Thornton, while a minor, upon the death of his mother. Thornton is and has been a resident of Texas throughout his life and, as an absentee, was cited through a curator ad hoc.

The substantial question concerns whether or not Thornton's mineral royalty interest was extinguished by non-user prior to the production of oil in paying quantities on December 6, 1948; such production within the prescriptive period interrupting the accrual of prescription so as to maintain the existence of a royalty interest in favor of its owner at the time, Union Sulphur Company v. Andrau, 217 La. 662, 47 So.2d 38.

Omitting a detailed factual statement, decision of this question depends upon whether or not the ten years' liberative prescription--suspended during Thornton's minority following the death of his mother¹--recommenced running as of August 19, 1942, when he was judicially emancipated in Texas. If it did, then mineral production took place approximately one and one-half years Subsequent to the accrual of the ten years' prescription, which thus had extinguished his royalty interest because of non-user during the prescriptive period. If on the other hand prescription against Thornton's Louisiana royalty interest did not re-commence running (and remained suspended despite the Texas emancipation) until August 4, 1944, when Thornton reached the age of twenty-one years, then prescription did Not accrue prior to its interruption by production, and Thornton remains the owner of the disputed royalty interest and, as such, is entitled to receive the proceeds deposited into court.

It is stipulated that the Texas decree fully emanicipated Thornton, at least for purposes of Texas law, in the same manner as a Louisiana judicial emancipation does under LSA-C.C. arts. 385, 386; and it is also conceded that the Texas decree was never, prior to the present proceedings, brought to the attention of or recognized by a Louisiana court.

Thus the specific issue for our determination is: did Thornton's emancipation by a Texas judicial decree effectively give him majority status insofar as the running of liberative prescription against him in Louisiana is concerned? The District Court answered this question in the affirmative.

The curator ad hoc for the appellant absentee relies upon the rule that 'an order removing the disabilities of infancy can have no operation without the state wherein it was rendered,' 43 C.J.S. Infants § 30, p. 99.

Cited in support of this rule are Deason v. Jones, 7 Cal.App.2d 482, 45 P.2d 1025; Decker v. Hickman, 116 Okl. 65, 243 P. 516, and Beauchamp v. Bertig, 90 Ark. 351, 119 S.W. 75, 23 L.R.A.,N.S., 659. These cases do indeed contain expressions favorable to appellant's contentions, and they did refuse to enforce in the forums concerned rights allegedly arising by reason of foreign decrees emancipating minors. But, in our opinion, the reason in each such instance is not, as urged, any general rule that foreign emancipation decrees at the minor's domicile do not confer majority status unless sued upon and especially recognized in the forum concerned.

In the Beauchamp and Decker cases, for instance, it was held that the general law of the forum gave the minor the right to disaffirm sales made before reaching twenty-one years of age, within a certain period of time thereafter. Though the minor's such prior sales of realty within the jurisdiction of the forum had been made by virtue of a foreign decree of emancipation at the minor's domicile, these decisions held that such decrees could not confer majority status for purposes of avoiding the general law of the forum concerned that All minors could disavow sales made prior to reaching the age of majority. It is to be noted that the Beauchamp case specifically, and the Decker case by implication, indicated that even a local decree removing the disabilities of minority could not confer upon the sale made pursuant thereto immunity form disavowal subsequent to reaching the age of twenty-one years.

Thus these cases are expressions of the principles that 'The law of the situs of immovable property controls and governs its acquisition, disposition, and devolution', 15 C.J.S. Conflict of Laws § 19, p. 936, and that 'the status of an individual is governed by the law of his domicile, but a foreign status unknown to the forum will not be recognized there,' 15 C.J.S. Conflict of Laws, § 14b, p. 906. (The 'foreign status unknown to the forum' would be that of a minor, emancipated or not, who could sell property before reaching the age of twenty-one and be unable to disaffirm contracts entered into before such time².)

These decisions do not, in our opinion, go so far as to hold that the courts of the forum would refuse to recognize the full majority status conferred by the foreign emancipation decree of the minor's domicile, if a domestic decree could recognize such a status.

Likewise, in Deason v. Jones above-cited, construing the foreign (Oklahoma) decree in question with reference to the Oklahoma statute authorizing such procedure, the California court held that the Oklahoma decree did not give the minor a 'legal status of majority and did not purport to do so. It merely gave him the right to transact business with the same effect as if such business were transacted by a person who had acquired such a status of majority,' 45 P.2d 1025. We do not believe this decision to be authority for the proposition that foreign emancipation decrees at the minor's domicile can never give him majority status for purposes of dealings in other states--simply that the Oklahoma decree in question did not purport to do so. Cf. also Wilkinson v. Buster, 124 Ala. 574, 26 So. 940.

But in the present case, unlike those above cited, the emancipation decree of the minor's domicile fully emancipated him and created a status relieved of all the disabilities of minority identical with the status recognized by the law of the present forum as resulting from a domestic emancipation.

The effectiveness of the decree in Texas fully emancipating the minor is stipulated.³ As counsel for appellant correctly urges, the 'full faith and credit clause' of the national constitution, U.S.Const. art. 4, § 1, does not, however, require Louisiana courts automatically to accord the decree the same effect as it has in Texas, but simply to consider it conclusive evidence of whatever rights are therein decreed if and when presented for recognition by a Louisiana court. Gasquet v. Fenner, 247 U.S. 16, 38 S.Ct. 416, 62 L.Ed. 956; Beauchamp v. Bertig, 90 Ark. 351, 119 S.W. 75, 23 L.R.A., N.S., 659. As the latter case specifically notes, a foreign emancipation decree Could be simply conclusive evidence of the right to sell and during minority in the Foreign jurisdiction; but it still is not determinative of such right to sell land within the jurisdiction of the...