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Lawsuit over mineral rights can proceed, court says Friday, Oct 26, 2007 By Rob Moritz Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A lawsuit over who owns the mineral rights under more than 4,000 acres in White County can go to trial, the state Supreme Court said Thursday. The high court rejected the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's petition to dismiss the lawsuit filed by family members who sold the land in White and Prairie counties to the commission in 2000. John Tarlton Morrison and his family filed sued the commission in White County after being told in 2005 that they did not own the mineral rights for the property. The lawsuit contends the Morrisons were told during negotiations to sell the land to the commission they would retain the mineral rights on the property, which is located in the Fayetteville Shale, a geological formation that stretches from north and central Arkansas to the Mississippi River. Emerging technologies and high natural gas prices have spurred growth in natural gas exploration in the area in recent years. During a hearing earlier this year, the commission asked that the lawsuit be dismissed because the property was sold more than six years ago and the statute of limitations for filing the lawsuit had expired. The commission also asked for a writ of prohibition, arguing the lawsuit should have been filed in Pulaski County and that the circuit judge hearing the case was outside his jurisdiction. White County Circuit Judge Bill Mills denied the commission's motions. The high court affirmed the judge's ruling in a unanimous decision Thursday, saying the statute of limitations had not run and did not begin until the Morrisons actually discovered discrepancy over who owned the mineral rights. The Supreme Court also said the circuit judge was within his jurisdiction when he heard the case. "The plain language of these statutes," the ruling said, "provides the circuit court with the authority to conclude the venue was proper in White County; that is, the circuit court was not wholly without jurisdiction to determine that the action could be maintained in White County and not Pulaski County." Scott Henderson, director of the Game and Fish Commission, said last year that the agency owns more than 350,000 acres statewide, including about 100,000 acres within the Fayetteville Shale. He said he expects the commission to eventually get $2 million to $3 million a year from the signing of leases for natural gas exploration and production on the property. Also last year, the state attorney general issued an opinion saying that mineral rights revenue from commission-owned land, particularly in the Fayetteville Shale, belonged to the commission. |
