In May 1951 J.B. Young, Elizabeth Cornell, and H.D. Cornell executed a deed, labeled a "Royalty Deed," that conveyed "an undivided one-one hundred and twenty-eighth (1/128) interest" in the oil, gas and other minerals under tracts in Reeves County, while reserving the rentals and bonus and stipulating that the land was under leases with a 1/8 royalty and that the grantees would receive "one-sixteenth (1/16) of the royalties" under them.¹ For future leases the deed gave the grantees "a 1/128 (1/16 of the usual 1/8 royalty) part" of production taken and saved under them.² For seven decades the grantees and their successors received a fixed 1/128 royalty without dispute until Scott Johnson, a successor of the grantees, claimed in 2020 that the deed conveyed a floating 1/16 nonparticipating royalty.³

Johnson sued the Cliftons, successors of the Cornells, for a declaratory judgment, and the trial court denied his motion for summary judgment and granted the Cliftons', declaring that the deed conveyed a fixed 1/128 royalty.¹ While Johnson's appeal was pending this Court decided Van Dyke v. Navigator Group, and the Eighth Court of Appeals then relied heavily on the double-fraction presumption to hold that the deed conveyed a floating 1/16 royalty, refused to consider the Cliftons' presumed-grant argument as forfeited and refused to remand in the interest of justice.² The Supreme Court granted the Cliftons' petition for review, heard argument on December 2, 2025 and on March 13, 2026 reversed.³

Petitions for review from the Eighth Court of Appeals (El Paso); argued December 2, 2025; opinion by Justice Young issued March 13, 2026.⁴

• The Cliftons:¹ whether the court of appeals misapplied the Van Dyke double-fraction presumption to the deed and, at a minimum, whether the case should be remanded in the interest of justice for the trial court to consider the presumed-grant doctrine.
• Johnson:² whether the deed conveyed a floating 1/16 royalty rather than the fixed 1/128 royalty the parties had treated it as conveying.

The Court construed the deed as it construes any contract, primarily seeking the parties' intended meaning as expressed in the text they adopted and considering all the deed's language.¹

Whether the deed conveys a floating 1/16 or a fixed 1/128 royalty.

Johnson (Respondent): The deed's use of "1/8" within a double fraction invokes the presumption that "1/8" refers to the entire mineral estate, so it conveyed a floating 1/16 nonparticipating royalty and everyone had misunderstood the deed for 70 years.¹

The Cliftons (Petitioners): The deed's text rebuts the double-fraction presumption, and in the alternative the case should be remanded in the interest of justice so the trial court can consider the presumed-grant doctrine, which Van Dyke clarified after the trial and the briefing.²

The opinion does not recite the petition's reasons for review, but it describes the case as presenting the two issues addressed in Van Dyke, double fractions and the presumed-grant doctrine, which the court of appeals applied for the first time after that decision.¹

None noted

Holding

The deed's plain language rebuts the presumption that "1/8" in a double fraction refers to the entire mineral estate, because the parties used 1/8 for its ordinary numerical value, so the deed conveys a fixed 1/128 nonparticipating royalty on future leases.¹

Reasoning

Van Dyke directs courts to begin with the presumption that a double fraction was used purposefully and that "1/8" reflects the entire mineral estate, but the presumption is "readily and genuinely rebuttable" by express language, distinct provisions that cannot be harmonized with the term-of-art reading, or repeated arithmetical use of fractions.² Unlike the instruments in Van Dyke and Hysaw, this deed expresses the product, "1/128," in both the granting clause and the future-lease clause, uses the parenthetical double fraction to show its work, and harmonizes cleanly because 1/16 of the present-lease 1/8 royalty equals 1/128, so the presumption is rebutted.³ The future-lease royalty is fixed and not floating because it is a 1/128 portion of royalties on the entire original tract, an independent conveyance separate from the granting clause.⁴ The Court did not decide whether remand for the presumed-grant doctrine was required, explaining that the doctrine asks who owns the property today by looking at long-asserted adverse claims, and that applying it here would lead to the same result as the text, a fixed 1/128 royalty.⁵

Disposition

Court of appeals' judgment reversed and the trial court's summary judgment reinstated.⁶

Construction of the deed under ordinary contract principles, looking to all of its language to deduce the parties' intent.¹

Justice Young delivered the opinion of the Court, with no separate writings.¹