20 Ind. App. 224 | Ind. Ct. App. | 1898
Demurrers of the appellants for want of sufficient facts to the complaint of one of the appellees and to cross-complaints of the other appellees were overruled. ■ Each of these pleadings showed that the appellants, being tenants under an oil and gas lease of certain land, for the term of five years and as much longer as gas and oil should be found in paying quantities on said land, caused to be erected thereon an oil and gas derrick, and contracted with one Peter Ogle to drill a well for oil or gas where the derrick was located. One of the appellees furnished natural gas to said contractor for fuel with which to run the engine by which power was supplied for drilling the well. All the other appellees performed labor in the drilling of the well under the employment of said contractor.
It was alleged in the complaint and each of the cross-complaints, that the well so drilled “is now a
The statute under which the appellees proceeded, section 7255, Burns’ R. S. 1894, provides, that contractors, etc., and “all persons performing labor or furnishing material or machinery for erecting, altering, repairing, or removing any house, mill, manufactory, or other building, bridge, reservoir, system of water works, or other structure, may have a lien,” etc. If the appellees could claim the benefit of this statute it would seem that it must be upon the ground that an oil well as described in the pleadings is a “structure” within the meaning of that word in the connection in Avhich it is used in the statute. The term, when applied to a material thing made by human labor, whether considered etymologically or with reference to common usage, or with regard to the words by Avhich it is immediately preceded in the statute, means something composed of parts or portions which have been put together by human exertion.
We are not left to rely upon our OAvn knowledge or common usage as to wha*t is meant and understood by the expression “an oil well,” but the thing to which
In McElwaine v. Hosey, 135 Ind. 481, 492, it was said that the boiler, engine, shafting, beam, derrick, reel, ropes, and drill, when put in place and action, in drilling a gas well, constitute, not a mill, but a structure within the meaning of the statute above mentioned. If such appliances for making a gas well be a structure, it would seem that a completed oil well with all its appliances, including the drilled hole in the earth, with its tubing, should also be regarded as within the meaning to which the language of the statute may legitimately be expanded in its application by the courts. The judgment is affirmed.