Alpine Petroleum Co. v. Lewis

LANGDON, P. J.

This appeal is by the plaintiff from a portion of a judgment denying it damages for alleged inter

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ference with its leasehold rights in certain land in the county of Ventura, California. Judgment was given quieting plaintiff’s title to this leasehold interest and restraining defendants from interfering with the enjoyment thereof.

The defendants are the owners of the land and transferred to lessees the right to sink wells and prospect for oil. Through successive transfers, the plaintiff became the owner of these oil leases. There is no question about this phase of the case, and the portion of the judgment quieting plaintiff’s title to the leases, from which no appeal was taken, makes it unnecessary for us to set forth the details of the transactions leading to this result.

In its complaint plaintiff also charged that defendants interfered with it in obtaining drilling contractors and persuaded drillers to leave its employment and circulated false stories that plaintiff was not paying its bills, all wilfully and maliciously and for the purpose of obstructing plaintiff in its work under its leases; that defendants commenced certain actions against plaintiff’s predecessors in interest in said leaseholds, seeking to have it judicially declared that they had no right, title or interest in the land, well knowing that plaintiff was the assignee of the defendants in said actions and that said actions were brought to hamper and interfere with the quiet enjoyment of plaintiff herein.

The trial court has found, upon conflicting evidence, that the defendants did not interfere with the drillers or drilling contractors in the employ of plaintiff and that defendants did not make the statements or do the acts charged by plaintiff. With reference to the other allegations of the complaint, it was found by the court that defendants commenced actions against Spellacy and Neiswender and fictitious defendants to quiet title to the land in question, but that such actions were commenced in good faith and in the belief that the said Spellacy and Neiswender, who were the first assignees of the lessees named in the leases and who, in turn, had assigned said leases to Alpine Petroleum Company, had not complied with the terms of their leases. This finding is supported by the testimony in the record regarding the assignments of the leases. They were originally given to Messrs. Oaks and Watlington and were nonassignable. The lessors, later signed a consent to an