Landman Contract Defeated by the Statute of Frauds
Charles Sartain and Chance Decker, writing in Gray Reed & McGraw’s Energy & the Law blog, describe a contract case in which an oil and gas landman found out that the contract he signed with a purported agent for a client was unenforceable.
The independent landman signed a contract with the purported agent of the plaintiffs, in which the producers were to pay Moore “$600 per mineral acre for for leases signed. The plaintiff said he helped secure numerous leases, but defendants refused to pay.
The authors explain that the court found that the contract didn’t specify the properties it applied to, this violating the Statute of Frauds. Sartain and Decker then offer some ways the contract could have been written so it would have been enforceable.
