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29 S.W.2d 809

Shell Petroleum Corp. v. Puckett

Court of Appeals of Texas

Decided May 29, 1930

Court of Appeals of Texas · decided 1930-05-29

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“Appellant insists that the right conveyed to appellees `of mining and operating for oil and gas' on the land did not pass to them a right to resort to seismographs as a means of determining whether there was oil or gas thereon or not; and that, owning no right to resort to seismographs, appellees should not have been heard to complain because appellant resorted to them for such a purpose, if it did. We think a right to prospect for oil and gas was incidental to the right conveyed to appellees to mine and operate for same on the land, and are inclined to think that in prospecting for such minerals appellees had a right to resort to seismographs.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including Yates Et Ux. v. Gulf Oil Corporation, Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Cowden

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1930-05-29

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently February 1985

8 federal appellate · 1 state decisions

50193019401950196019701980decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

•■ WILLSON, C.'J.

¶1 (after stating the case as above).

¶2 Appellant insists-that the right conveyed to appellees “of mining and operating for oil and gas” on the land did not pass to them a right to resort to seismographs as a means of determining whether there was oil or gas thereon or not; and that, owning no right to resort to seismographs, appellees should not have been heard to complain because appellant resorted to them for such a purpose, if it did. We think a right to prospect for oil and gas was incidental to the right conveyed to appellees to mine and operate for same on the land, and are inclined to think that in prospecting for such minerals appellees had a right to resort to seismographs. But in disposing of the appeal we do not think it necessary to decide the question; for if appellees did not have such a right they had no cause to complain because appellant exercised such a right, if it did; and if appellees had such a right they were not deprived of it by any conduct attributed by them to appellant. The fact, if it was a fact, that appellant used seismographs in prospecting for oil and gas'on the land did not deprive appellees of the right, if they had any, to also use seismographs for such a purpose. It appears in the record that, if injury resulted from the use of seismographs as charged by appellees, it was to the land, and that the right to recover damages therefor was in the owners of the land and not in appellees.

¶3 The judgment will be reversed, and judgment will be here rendered that appellees take nothing by their suit against appellant.

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