Trklja v. Keys

STEEL, J. pro tem.

This is an action for injunctive relief wherein plaintiffs sought to restrain the defendants from mining certain creek bottom lands situated in Amador County, the fee in which vests in the plaintiffs, subject to a reservation of the mineral rights vesting in the defendants. Both parties deraign title through a common grantor.

To the complaint in the action, the defendants interposed a demurrer alleging that the complaint failed to state a cause of action against the defendants for the reason that plaintiffs purchased only the surface rights in the property, subject to the mineral reservation reserved and owned by the defendants, which, it was argued, carries with it the right to extract said minerals from the property. The trial court sustained the demurrer without leave to amend, hence this appeal.

[212]

The sole issue presented, therefore, is whether or not the defendants, respondents herein, have a right to extract the minerals so owned by them, even though they may injure or destroy the surface of said lands in so doing.

While this point is somewhat novel in this jurisdiction we do find that it has received the attention of the Supreme Court of this state in considering two cases arising in Tuba County, to-wit:

Yuba Investment Co.

v.

Yuba Consolidated Gold Fields,

184 Cal. 469 [194 Pac. 19], and again in the same entitled case reported in 199 Cal. 203 [248 Pac. 672], wherein the court affirmed the judgment of the trial court rendered pursuant to the law and directions of the court as set forth in the opinion in the first case

supra.

While one of the points considered in the Tuba County cases,

supra,

had to do with the right of the defendant, successor in title to the United States Government, to deposit detritus in a settling basin on another tract of land to which plaintiff had succeeded as owner of the minerals therein, the court very thoroughly considered the respective rights of the parties arising by virtue of the deed involved which contained the same mineral reservation as the one we are here considering.