Heller v. Dailey’s Empirical Analysis
1902
Citation profile
2 district · 54 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 58 later decisions — most recently April 1985 · most notably Frost-Johnson Lumber Co. v. Salling's Heirs (1922), Kolachny v. Galbreath (1910)
2 district · 54 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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 Grommes v. St. Paul Trust Co. · Edmonds v. Mounsey · Railsback v. Walke · Donahoe v. Rich · Heal v. Niagara Oil Co.
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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ « * * The owner of land is not, by virtue of his proprietorship thereof, the absolute owner of the oil and gas in and under it in its free and natural state, nor yet reduced to actual control of any person; but he, together with the other owners of land in the gas field, has a qualified ownership, consisting-of or amounting to his exclusive right to do what may be done on, through, oi-under his land (as the making of wells), necessary to reduce the minerals to his possession, and, by thus acquiring the exclusive control, to become the-owner of the mineral substances as his personal property, observing due regard in his operations to the like-enjoyment of such exclusive right by all other landowners in like circumstances. This exclusive right is his private-property. I-Ie cannot grant more than he owns. Therefore, by granting all the oil and gas in and under his land, he does not grant more than a right to reduce to ownership the oil and gas which may be obtained by operating on the-land, whereby substances which, at the time of the making of the grant, may be in and under lands of other surface proprietors, may come into rightful ownership of the grantee as his personal property. Though, because of the peculiar nature of oil and gas, a corporeal interest in them in place cannot be-created, and title to the specific mineral substances cannot be acquired without the reduction of them first to personal property, yet the exclusive and' assignable right to do this, with the acco”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““If by such general terms all of a specified solid mineral, as coal, in and under the land were granted, it would be a grant of real estate, Plummer v. Hillside etc., Co., 160 Pa. St. 483, 28 Atl. 853 ; but because of the fluidity and fugitiveness of petroleum and natural gas the absolute ownership of these mineral substances within the land can not be acquired without reducing them to actual control; so that a distinction must be and is made between these elusive minerals in and under the ground and the solid minerals in place in the earth. Therefore, a grant of all the oil and gas in and under a tract of land is not a grant of any particular specific substance as would be a grant of the coal in and under certain land. “The owner of land is not by virtue of his proprietorship thereof the absolute owner of the oil and gas in and under it, in its free and natural state, not yet reduced to actual control of any person . .”
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.