Gumaer v. Colorado Oil Company

Statement by Mr. Justice SHIRAS.

The Colorado Oil Company, describing itself as a corporation organized and existing under the laws of New York, brought its bill in equity in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Colorado, on June 15, 1887, against Augustus R. Gumaer, a citizen of Colorado, and the Florence Oil Company, of that state, praying for an injunction to restrain the defendant Gumaer from assigning or incumbering a certain leasehold estate, with certain rights and privileges thereto annexed, and to restrain the defendants, and each of them, from consuming any oil, gas, metal, or mineral from the leasehold premises, or disturbing the complainant's possession thereof, or destroying its property thereon. The court entered an order on the following day restraining the defendants from doing any of the acts which the complainant sought to have enjoined until the 27th of the same month,-the day set for a hearing of the cause. On that day it was ordered, in accordance with the stipulation of counsel, that the restraining order should remain in force until the final hearing, and that the defendants should answer to the merits on or before September 15, 1887. On the 12th of that month the defendant Gumaer filed his answer, and on the 3d of the following month the company filed a formal replication thereto.

A judgment pro confesso against the Florence Oil Company was entered on February 6, 1888. The cause, as against Gumaer, was heard in the said court upon bill, answer, and evidence, and on December 22, 1888, the court entered a final decree embodying the relief by injunction prayed for in the bill, and ordering that a lease from Stephen J. Tanner to Gumaer, dated October 6, 1886, be surrendered and delivered, for the use of the complainant, into the office of the clerk of the court, and that two other leases, dated, respectively, October 12, 1886, and December 20, 1886, by which it appeared that Gumaer had granted and demised certain parts of the property to the company, be canceled and annulled, and all parties thereto be relieved from the conditions thereof. The defendants appealed from that decree to this court.

T. M. Patterson, for appellants.

E. T. Wells and R. T. McNeal, for respondent.

Mr. Justice SHIRAS, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.