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DISSENTING OPINION

I respectfully dissent. This a case of first impression regarding the lessee’s intentional wash-out of overriding royalty owners’ interests in two oil and gas leases in Galveston County, Texas (the “Bowers and Gordon Leases” or “the B&G Leases”) in the absence of a surrender clause or release permitting the lessee to terminate the Lease at will and despite provisions in the Leases treating the lessee’s actions as breach of the rights of the overriding royalty interest owners. I would hold that appellants, Stroud Production, L.L.C. (“Stroud Production”), Plantation Petroleum Corporation (“Plantation”), and Robert A. Stroud, (collectively, the “Stroud Defendants”) conspired to and did tortiously interfere with contracts (the “Assignments”) assigning overriding royalty interests (“ORRIs”) in the production from the B&G Leases to appellees, Patrick E. Hosford, Morris L. Etheridge, David T. Threinen, and Nelson E. Woods (collectively the “Assignees” or the “ORRI Owners”) by causing appellant Plantation, the Lessee in the B&G Leases, to breach obligations owed to the ORRI Owners under the Leases and to repudiate the Leases, washing out the royalty interests of the ORRI Owners and converting the royalties due the ORRI Owners under the B&G Leases to the Stroud Defendants’ own benefit.

I would affirm the judgment in favor of appellees, the ORRI Owners.

 
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