Drake v. Berry

Citations

• 259 Pa. 8
• 102 A. 315
• 1917 Pa. LEXIS 507

Syllabus

<p>Mines and mining — Coal leases — Accounting — Construction — . Forfeiture.</p> <p>1. “Miners’ weight” as used in a coal lease is not a fixed, unvarying quantity of mine run material, but is such quantity of the same as operators and miners may from time to time agree as being necessary or sufficient to produce a ton of prepared coal.</p> <p>2. Where a coal lease provided “miners’ weight to he the standard” of each ton of coal mined, and thereafter the successors in title of the lessors brought a hill in equity against the lessees for an accounting for coal mined, the court properly decided that the accounting should be on the basis of the miners’ weight fixed upon by the operators and miners during the accounting period, not upon the basis of the miners’ weight as it existed at the time of the execution of the lease.</p> <p>Drake et al. v. Lacoe et al., 157 Pa. 17, followed.</p> <p>3. In such case, a provision in the lease “that sufficient pillars of coal shall be left to support the roof over the gangways and the usual protection of the mines generally,” was for the protection of the colliery, not of the surface, and the successors of the lessors, though owning the surface, were not entitled to an injunction to restrain the removal of coal from the pillars, especially after all reason to apprehend surface disturbance by the removal of such ^coal had ceased to exist.</p> <p>4. In such ease a usage that the owner of the surface was entitled to one-third of all the pillar coal, could not be set up to defeat a grant of all the coal in the mine, and the successor of the lessor was not entitled to restrain the removal of such coal or to have a forfeiture of the lease declared because of such removal.</p>