066 Haupt, Inc. v. Tarrant County Water Control and Improvement District Number One

Richard F. Brown

 
The following is not a legal opinion. You should consult your attorney if the case may be of significance to you.
 
Haupt v. Tarrant County Water Control and Improvement District Number One, 870 S.W.2d 350 (Tex. App.–Waco 1994 no writ) is a reprise of a case reported in Pipeline January, 1994. A valuable well site was flooded to create a water reservoir. The Texas Supreme Court expanded the “accommodation doctrine” (which limits the basic rule that the mineral estate is the dominant estate with a duty on the lessee to use no more of the surface than is reasonably necessary) to say that the rules of reasonable usage of the surface may require the adoption of an alternative surface use by the lessee. In other words, the lessee might be obligated to directionally drill rather than interfere with the surface use.
 
The concern expressed here was that the opinion was completely silent as to whether “reasonable” alternatives meant economically reasonable or merely that there were alternatives. On remand to the Waco Court of Appeals, the court expressly held that reasonableness of a particular means of production must include its impact on the value of the mineral estate. The significance of the case is that it clearly holds that the lessee continues to have the right to use so much of the surface as is reasonably necessary to develop the mineral estate. Alternative surface uses must be considered only if they are economically reasonable.