Alice McCabe v. Michael Parker

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
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No. 09-3117
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Larry Griffis; Onita Griffis; *
Carolyn Hudson, *
*
Appellants, *
* Appeal from the United States
v. * District Court for the Eastern
* District of Arkansas.
Anadarko E & P Company, LP; *
Anadarko Land Corporation; *
Upland Industrial Development *
Company; Chesapeake Exploration, *
LLC, *
*
Appellees. *
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Submitted: March 9, 2010
Filed: June 8, 2010
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Before BYE, ARNOLD, and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.
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ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
Larry Griffis and others filed this action to quiet title in certain natural gas
rights against Anadarko E&P Company, L.P., Chesapeake Exploration, LLC, and
others. We refer to the plaintiffs as Mr. Griffis and to the defendants as Anadarko.
Mr. Griffis claimed title to the mineral interests at issue as owner of the fee in the
relevant property, and Anadarko traces its title to a reservation in a 1936 deed in the
parties' common chain of title. The reservation, in pertinent part, excepted from the

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1The Honorable William R. Wilson, United States District Judge for the Eastern
District of Arkansas.
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grant "all of the minerals under the land ... together with the right to enter upon said
land ... and ... drill for and remove minerals ... under the said land and to place ... such
... pipe lines ... as may be proper, necessary or convenient in ... drilling for or removal
... of any minerals." The district court 1 held that this language was, as a matter of law,
sufficient to reserve in the grantor the right to natural gas and therefore entered
judgment in favor of Anadarko. Mr. Griffis appeals and we affirm.
In this diversity case, we apply the substantive law of Arkansas. See PHL
Variable Ins. Co. v. Fulbright McNeill, Inc., 519 F.3d 825, 828 (8th Cir. 2008). The
parties' arguments, and the district court's opinion, center mainly on what is known as
the Strohacker doctrine because of its origin in Missouri Pac. R.R. Co. v. Strohacker,
202 Ark. 645, 152 S.W.2d 557 (1941). That case involved deeds executed in 1892
and 1893 that reserved "all ... mineral deposits" in the tract conveyed, and the
Supreme Court of Arkansas concluded that, despite the reservation, the right to natural
gas passed to the grantees. The successors to the grantees, the court held, were
entitled to judgment because the party claiming the benefit of the reservation had not
shown that, at the time and in the locale where the deeds were executed, gas
production or exploration was general, and legal or commercial usage assumed that
gas was "within the term 'minerals'." Id. at 646, 650-51, 401 S.W.2d at 558, 561. In
the case before us, the district court decided that the Strohacker criteria were met as
a matter of law and thus the reservation included the rights to natural gas.
We don't find it necessary to reach the interesting and surprisingly complex
issue of whether Mr. Griffis's claim can pass muster under Strohacker, because we
think that Anadarko was entitled to judgment on another ground. It is important for
present purposes to recognize that the Strohacker decision dealt with deeds executed
in 1892 and 1893 and that the court, speaking in 1941, observed that "it can no longer

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be doubted that a reservation of minerals, or of mineral rights, is sufficient to identify
oil and gas." Strohacker, 202 Ark. at 652, 152 S.W.2d at 561. What this means is that
in any deed of Arkansas land executed on or after the date of the 1941 deed involved
in Strohacker, a generic, unmodified reference to minerals includes the rights to
natural gas as a matter of law. Presumably, that was because the Arkansas Supreme
Court did not doubt that gas exploration or production was by that time general
throughout the state or that legal or commercial usage everywhere in the state had by
that time come to accept gas as a mineral. It was only old deeds that presented an
interpretive difficulty.
But this is not the only Arkansas case that provides a bright-line temporal rule
with respect to the meaning of a general grant or reservation of minerals. In Sheppard
v. Zeppa, 199 Ark. 1, 133 S.W.2d 860 (1939), which dealt with a deed of Arkansas
land executed in 1935, the court flatly held that a reservation of "the mineral rights in,
upon and under" the relevant tract "was effective to withhold oil, gas, and other
minerals from the conveyance." Id., 199 Ark. at 12-13, 133 S.W.2d at 866. In other
words, Sheppard established the principle that any deed of Arkansas mineral rights
generally, executed at the time or after the deed in that case was executed, carries the
rights to natural gas with it. Our confidence in this conclusion draws strength from
the Strohacker court's citation of Sheppard with approval and from the structure of the
Strohacker opinion itself. Strohacker, 202 Ark. at 651-52, 152 S.W.2d at 561. Since
the deed from which Anadarko deraigned its title was executed in 1936, Anadarko
was entitled to judgment.
Affirmed.
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