Watkins v. Slaughter’s Empirical Analysis
1944
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently October 2016
17 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Brown v. Smith · State Nat'l Bk. of Corpus Christi v. Morgan · Pure Oil Co. v. Crabb · Schlittler v. Smith · Schlittler v. Smith
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Applying those rules of interpretation to the reservation contained in the deed from Bob Slaughter to appellant, F. G. Watkins, we are forced to the conclusion that the Vie interest reserved by Slaughter was royalty and intended by the parties to the deed to be royalty * * * In order to apply to-the reservation the interpretation contended for by appellants, it would be-necessary to disregard completely the-last clause, which designates the reservation as royalty * * * Since-the term ‘royalty’ has a well-defined meaning in the oil and gas industry and has been recognized by the courts to be a share of the product or profit reserved by the owner as a consideration for permitting another to use his property for the purpose of prospecting for,, discovering, and producing oil, gas, and other substances, and the portion reserved by Slaughter was designated' as ‘royalty,’ it necessarily follows that the reservation consisted of ¾6 of all of all of the oil, gas, and other minerals that might thereafter be produced from the land under any lease executed by the grantee, his heirs or assigns.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.