Clark v. Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co.

Citations

• 250 Pa. 304
• 95 A. 462
• 1915 Pa. LEXIS 941

Syllabus

<p>Contracts — Mining lease — Mistake of law.</p> <p>1. Where a party, with knowledge of all the material facts, and without any other special circumstance, giving rise to an equity in his behalf, enters into a transaction affecting his interests, rights and liabilities, under an ignorance or error with respect to the rules of law controlling the case, courts will not, in general, relieve him from the consequences of his mistake.</p> <p>2. Plaintiffs, in 1883, leased the coal under four tracts of land to defendant, which agreed to pay therefor certain royalties. The terms of the lease were performed for a period of about twenty years, after which defendant, while continuing to mine, refused payment of royalties, alleging that it was the owner of one of the four tracts demised, and that it had through accident and mistake, and believing and relying on the ownership by lessor, paid for more coal than was under the other three pieces of land, and was, therefore, under no further obligation to pay the lessor for coal mined, but was entitled to reimburse itself for such over-payments from that part of the premises which lessor admittedly owned. It appeared that defendant company was in fact the owner of one of the four pieces of land mined, but that plaintiffs had color of title thereto, and that all the facts concerning the disputed title were matters of record at the time the lease was made. There was no evidence of any mistake of fact, except the mere acceptance of the lease by the tenant. Held, the lower court did not err in deciding that if any mistake was made in the execution of the lease, it was purely a mistake of law which would not avail the lessee as a defense against the payment of the stipulated royalties.</p>