71 So. 521 | La. | 1916
The defendant has appealed from a judgment annulling a contract purporting to be a sale of the minerals on or in the plaintiff’s land and a lease of the land for mining purposes.
The principal features of the contract are these: For and in consideration of the price and sum of $1 paid in cash by the grantee, the plaintiff granted, bargained, sold, and conveyed unto the grantee, and his heirs and assigns, all of the oil, gas, coal, and other minerals in and under the lands described in the contract, together with the right of
The contract was signed on the 25th of January, 1911. Nothing whatever was done by the grantee or his assigns in pursuance of the grant, except that on the 24th of April, 1913, the defendant, transferee of the contract, deposited to the credit of the plaintiff in the People’s Bank of Mansfield, La., $16, there being 160 acres of land described in the contract. The plaintiff refused to receive the deposit, and 4 months later filed this action of nullity.
The suit was founded principally upon these complaints: (1) That the cash price, $1, paid as a consideration for the pretended sale, was out of proportion to the value of the grant, and that therefore, under the provisions of the Civil Code, the act could not be considered a sale; (2) that the 10 cents an acre stipulated as the consideration to be paid annually for a renewal from year to year, or to prevent a forfeiture, was also entirely out of proportion to the value of the pretended lease; (3) that the agreement contained and depended upon potestative conditions, and not mutual obligations; (4) that the pretended lease was without a fixed or definite term; and (5) that, if the contract was ever valid, it was violated and breached by the defendant’s failure to drill a well or do anything in pursuance of the agreement.
The answer of the defendant is that the annual rental of 10 cents an acre was adequate consideration for the lease, and that it was only after the defendant had expended a large sum of money in the development of the adjacent territory that the plaintiff deemed it advantageous to herself to seek to put an end to her contract.
There is no dispute as to the important facts of this case. The plaintiff’s land was of so little value at the time she signed the contract in question that 10 cents per acre might have been regarded as a fair annual rental. It was the discovery of gas and oil in the vicinity of the plaintiff’s land in April or May, 1913, that gave value to the lease in contest.
Opinion.
In the case of Saunders v. Busch-Everett Co., 71 South. 153, 138 La. 1049, where we held that the stipulation allowing the grantee to keep the option in force by paying an annual rental of 15 cents an acre was valid, the right was limited to 5 years. The opinion contains an analysis of our jurisprudence on mineral leases, distinguishing the contract then, under consideration from the nudum pactum found in other cases, and particularly in Murray v. Barnhart, 117 La. 1025, 42 South. 489.
We rest our decision in this case, not upon the potestative condition on which the contract was made, but upon the proposition that a contract purporting to give a perpetual option to hold land under a mineral lease is null.
The judgment appealed from is affirmed.