Duffield v. Rosenzweig

Citations

• 144 Pa. 520
• 23 A. 4
• 1891 Pa. LEXIS 637

Syllabus

<p>1. Where a lease for oil purposes granted to the lessee a certain tract of laud, with the exclusive right of boring for oil thereon, but restricted the operations of the lessee to certain specified sites, the lessee had no such possession as would support ejectment as to land outside the sites designated: Duffield v. Hue, 129 Pa. 94.</p> <p>2. The lessee, however, had the protection of the entire leasehold; and equity had jurisdiction to restrain the lessor, or others acting under him, from drilling wells thereon outside the designated sites and thereby lessening the production of the lessee’s wells, such injury being without adequate remedy at law: Duffield v. Hue, 136 Pa. 602.</p> <p>3. But, when wells have been drilled on the leasehold outside the sites designated, either by the lessor, or by those acting under him under a subsequent lease, the jurisdiction in equity does not oust the jurisdiction at law, and the first lessee may have a remedy at law against the lessor * to recover damages actually sustained by him from such drilling.</p> <p>4. In such case, the damages are not to be measured by the amount of oil taken out of the defendant’s wells so drilled, nor by the speculative opinions of operators as to how much of it might have been obtained through the plaintiff’s wells, but they may be measured by the difference in value of the plaintiff’s leasehold, before and after the injury was committed.</p> <p>5. By the procedure act of May 25,1887, all distinctions between trespass and case, so far as they relate to procedure, were abolished; and, though the plaintiff’s statement sets forth his claim in trespass, yet if the facts in evidence on the trial show that he is entitled to recover in either form of action, he is entitled to have judgment.</p>