Lesley v. VETERANS LAND BD. OF STATE

Justice WAINWRIGHT, Justice MEDINA, Justice GREEN, Justice JOHNSON, Justice WILLETT, Justice GUZMAN, and Justice LEHRMANN joined.

The right to lease minerals — the executive right — is one “stick” in the bundle of five real property rights that comprise a mineral estate. 1 We held long ago that the executive owes other owners of the mineral interest a duty of “utmost fair dealing”, 2 but we have seldom had occasion to elaborate. In this case, a land developer, who also owned part of the mineral estate and all of the executive right, imposed restrictive covenants on a subdivision, limiting oil…