By Bruce Tomaso – The Texas LawbookIn Texas oil and gas law, maybe yes, maybe no.
So when, in 1924, George H. Mulkey, the owner of 424.5 acres of ranchland in Martin County northeast of Midland, sold the property to G.R. White and G.W. Tom and reserved for himself “one-half of one-eighth of all minerals and mineral rights in said land,” what he really meant, Mulkey’s successors argue, was that he was reserving one-half of the minerals and mineral rights for himself.
“This court has made clear time and time again … that when interpreting the terms of a deed or contract, it is the job of the court to give the terms the meaning they had at the time they were adopted by the parties,” Tabolsky said. “We don’t ask what the terms meant in 2022. We ask what terms meant in 1924, when the deed was executed.”
“The evidence is undisputed that, for nearly 90 years, both the Mulkeys and the Whites understood and believed that, under the 1924 deed, the Mulkeys owned half the minerals and the Whites owned half the minerals. And they acted in accordance with that belief,” he and other lawyers for the Mulkey successors wrote in their Jan. 19 petition to the Supreme Court.