AAA Valley Gravel, Inc. v. Totaro

OPINION

I. INTRODUCTION

A property owner leased gravel mining rights to a lessee. The lessee in turn leased its rights to a sublessee. The sublessee assumed the lessee's duty to pay royalties to the property owner and agreed to pay overriding royalties to the lessee. The lessee later assigned the overriding royalties to an assignee. After more than a decade of operating under these arrangements, the subles-see purchased the property under a warranty deed with no title exception for the lease and then stopped paying the overriding royalties to the assignee.

The assignee sued the sublessee for the…