BP AMERICA PRODUCTION COMPANY, ATLANTIC RICHFIELD COMPANY AND VASTAR RESOURCES, INC., PETITIONERS, v. STANLEY G. MARSHALL, JR., ROBERT RAY MARSHALL, CATHERINE IRENE MARSHALL F/K/A CATHERINE I.M. HASHMI, AND MARGARET ANN MARSHALL F/K/A MARGARET A.M. JEFFUS, BY AND THROUGH DAVID JEFFUS, AS INDEPENDENT EXECUTOR OF THE ESTATE OF MARGARET MARSHALL, RESPONDENTS, 342 S.W.3d 59

Summary

The lessee argued that the court of appeals erred in holding that the discovery rule exception to limitations applied to the lessors' claims. The supreme court found that because the lessors had a duty to exercise reasonable diligence in protecting their mineral interests, and since the low probability of success of the lessee's continued operations could have been discovered with the exercise of reasonable diligence, the injury was not inherently undiscoverable. The lessors would have been able to discover the lessee's fraud through the use of reasonable diligence. The lessors' claims were barred by the statute of limitations. The court of appeals erred in reversing the trial court's judgment awarding title to the lessors' leasehold interest to the successors-in-interest where, by paying a royalty, the successors asserted a lessor-lessee relationship in which the successor, not the lessors, owned the leasehold, which was a hostile and unequivocal assertion of title inconsistent with ...